Forfeit
by rahleeyah
Summary: When Harry proposes to Ruth, she decides not to forfeit the chance to be happy with him. Just this once, she will refuse to follow the path of self-denial. It will not be easy, but then, life with Harry never is. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

This was not how he planned it. This was not at all how he planned it. The plan had been simple, elegant in its own way; a glass of wine, a soft smile, a small, black velvet box. A moment of privacy, a moment of peace, an invitation offered and accepted, a herald of things to come.

The plan had gone all to hell, though. Ros Meyers had died, the Home Secretary had died, Nightingale had very nearly set the whole of the western world on fire, and when the smoke cleared Ruth was as distant from him as the stars from the moon. She had asked him, just a few days (a few weeks? He couldn't remember, exactly) ago, if he wanted to meet her for a drink. He had said _yes, I think I do,_ meaning _Christ, Ruth, I would light myself on fire if you asked me to, a drink sounds lovely._ But their night out had never come to be, and in all the time that had passed since that moment, they'd barely had a chance to chat, let alone sit down together.

Over the course of the last few days, as his thoughts had percolated in and around this plan, formulating a thousand possible question-and-answer scenarios, his fingertips tracing nonsense patterns on the soft velvet of the little box tucked away in his jacket pocket, it had occurred to him just how little privacy they really had. Their every conversation took place within the walls of Thames House (or atop them); and everywhere they went and every word they spoke to one another seemed to carry with it a thousand veiled meanings as they cast anxious looks around the office, mindful as ever of the constant sensation of being observed.

No more quiet moments had come their way. No moments when she was feeling brave, when he was feeling confident, when they were both of them assured of their privacy and of the wisdom of confiding their personal feelings one to the other. Until today.

Yes, it was a bloody funeral. It was _Ros's_ bloody funeral, and it was in Harry's mind to wonder how his Section Chief might have taken it, had she ever learned how he planned to celebrate her interment. He hoped that she might approve, that she might find it somewhat macabre but also somewhat hopeful, and therefore a perfect opportunity for Harry and his lady love. He hoped, but he did not know, would not ever know, for Ros was lost to him, now and forever.

Ruth had given him this chance, though, had said _I need to talk to you_ in that gentle, slightly nervous tone of voice that seemed to imply _alone, and immediately._ Harry nodded his assent, one hand slipping into his coat pocket out of habit, and coming into contact with the little box he held there. _Now or never,_ he told himself sternly, and so he suggested _a turn around the grounds,_ and off they set, Harry with one hand clutching a little black box, the other hand hovering just behind her back, dying to touch her, not trusting himself in the slightest.

As they walked he watched her, studied her, this woman he loved so well. He took in the curve of her cheek, the pouty fullness of her lips, the sheer radiant brilliance of her eyes. Her slender form hidden beneath a long heavy coat, her soft, dark hair caught in the breeze, her pale skin reddened and ruddy in the winter sunlight. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman in the world. She was, he thought, the fulfillment of his every dream, his dearest wish, his greatest hope.

When would he next have cause to stand beside her thus unobserved, uninterrupted? It had been weeks, months, years since last he felt himself truly alone with this woman, truly able to open his heart to her, and it seemed to him that the very universe was whispering its encouragement. _Do it now,_ that tiny, intrepid voice echoed in the vaults of his mind. _Do it now, ask her now, before it's too late._

Still his hand hovered, not touching her, not yet, though every atom in his body trembled and shook with yearning for her, unable to break free from the longing to hold her, to pull her into his arms, crush her against his chest in a fierce embrace, and never, ever let her go.

"I feel like she's trying to tell us something, like this is what was missing from her life." Those quiet words, spoken as they stood together, staring out at grass and rolling fields and anywhere but each other, gave him the courage. Those quiet words pushed him off the edge of the cliff, ended his prevarication and made him bold. Perhaps this was what was missing from Ros's life, this quiet, this peacefulness, this solitude. That was a question he would never have an answer to. What Harry Pearce knew, though, knew for a fact, was that what _his_ life was missing was this peace, this solitude, this woman, and he would be damned if he let this opportunity pass him by.

Finally, he gave in. His hand connected with her body, resting there on the small of her back, feeling her lithe, slender frame curving instinctively at the touch, arching towards him and then away in the same moment. He bent his head, breathing in the warm, earthy scent of her hair, his lips brushing the delicate shell of her ear as he whispered, "marry me, Ruth."

* * *

The moment he touched her, she lost all sense of reason. For days, for weeks, for months, for years she had dreamt of his touch. Had longed for it, in the still darkness of many a lonely night. Had blushed, under the harsh lights of the Grid, furiously embarrassed at the turn her thoughts had taken, the way he could so easily distract her with a warm, full-lipped smile, with a single smoldering gaze. And now, now she felt the warmth of his hand, resting at the small of her back, felt his whole body curving around hers, drawing her in as a moth to a flame, felt the rush of his warm breath across her ear, her cheek, heard his words echoing inside her chest like the merry trilling of some happy little bell; _marry me, Ruth._

 _Marry me._

She was so stunned, so completely and utterly flabbergasted that he should make such a request of her, that she remained frozen, unable to look at him, unable to move, unable to think, hardly able to breathe. _Marry him?_ She had kissed him once in the eight years they'd known one another, and that was long ago; yet now he stood beside her, his warm breath fluttering across her cheek, asking her to marry him.

Her thoughts whirled, chaotic and unintelligible. _Is this really happening?_ She wondered in a daze. How could he ask her such a thing, here, now? How could she even contemplate accepting such an offer after everything they'd been through, the things they'd seen, the things they'd done? An empty chasm seemed to yawn between them of late, filled with the detritus of their years of dubious decisions. There was a little orphan boy with a cherub's face, and a dead man who had once shared her bed. There were friends, lovers, foes, strangers, dead and buried, taken from the world in violence and misery, taken because of decisions they had made, together. How could two people, two people with so much blood on their hands, two people whose love had nearly damned them not once but twice, ever be allowed such happiness?

 _Time, I need time,_ she thought desperately, and with that in mind, she spoke.

"Harry, this is neither the time nor the place-"

She had hoped to make him see what an impossible position he'd placed her in, hoped to make him see the sheer foolishness of asking her to make such a momentous decision when they were both of them grieving, but he was having none of it.

"This is exactly the time and the place," he interrupted her, still standing so close to her, still holding her with one arm slung low across her waist, and even through her heavy coat the touch of his hand warmed her through and through.

Harry Pearce was a dangerous man, in more ways that one. He had killed, he had lied, he had orchestrated the downfall of many a great man, and he possessed the ability to, with no more than a few whispered words, shatter her defenses and leave her weak and breathless with longing for him.

"It's the funeral. It's made you emotional," she protested. She couldn't really remember, any more, why she was fighting him so. This happened, some times; Ruth would dig in behind an idea, a belief, and like a dog with a bone she would worry it incessantly, and refuse to release her grip on it.

 _Think, Ruth, think,_ she chided herself. _Think about what you want._

What she wanted, more than anything, was to believe him. She wanted to believe that he loved her, that he wanted her, that they could survive together. She wanted to fall into his arms, and stay there forever, wanted to believe that one day she might feel something other than the endless tide of loneliness and guilt that had consumed her from the moment she floated away from him three years before. Fear gripped her, as she spoke and considered the possible truth behind her own words. What if he didn't want her, didn't love her; what if he was only flailing about, latching on to the first person who showed him some piece of kindness? She could not bear the thought of being his consolation prize, not when she loved him so fully, so deeply, so completely. She could imagine nothing worse than to finally reveal her heart to him, only to learn that he did not feel the same.

"No, it's made me see clearly. Ros gave everything to this country, and six people came to say goodbye to her. _Six people,_ Ruth. I don't want that for myself. And I _don't_ want that for you."

As he spoke he held her still, his voice low and earnest, beseeching, and she felt her walls beginning to crumble. The words themselves were not particularly romantic, and if she considered them too long she might well find herself growing cross with him, that he should think it appropriate to talk of their impending funerals in the midst of his marriage proposal. It was not his words that moved her; it was the tone in which he spoke, the heat of him, the passion behind the sentiment. He wanted more for himself, for her, for _them,_ and try though she might to hold desperately to some sense of reason, she found herself swept away by his voice.

"This is madness, Harry," she whispered. She did not dare look at him, for if she did she knew she would be lost, body and soul. If she looked at him, she would not be able to formulate the words to express to him her doubt, her need, her fear. For she was afraid, afraid that they might spend a few happy days together only to crumble into nothingness. Afraid that he might want her now, but upon sharing his life with her he might learn that she was not all he had dreamed, and he might grow tired of her. Afraid that one day a reckoning would come, and they would be held accountable for their sins.

"I don't think it is, Ruth," he answered.

"Then what would you call it?" Though she knew it was folly, she looked at him. Looked into his dear, weather-beaten face, into the warmth of his hazel eyes, and she saw reflected in his features her every thought, her every dream.

"I call it hope."

Ruth laughed, a strangled noise closer to a sob than a chuckle. "I think I've forgotten what that feels like," she confessed. Such a small confession, and yet it was more than she had given him in the many months since her return. For the first time since they had sat alone together in that godforsaken warehouse, she allowed him a glimpse of the tattered remnants of her soul. And for his part, Harry did not look away.

"Then marry me, Ruth, and let me remind you."

Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as he spoke those words; she wanted nothing more in this world than to marry this man, to love him, to hold him, to believe him when he told her that she was meant for more than grief and pain. She had spent so very long denying herself that it had almost become second nature, to turn away from the desires of her heart, but as he spoke her resolve withered and died. She wanted this, wanted _him,_ too much to deny it any longer.

"God help me," she breathed.

"Ruth," he sighed, leaning back just a little, trying to get a better look at her face. That sigh was laced with such heartbreak that it loosed her tears in earnest, and she began to weep, but she did not take her eyes from his face.

"Yes, Harry," she choked out behind her veil of tears. "God help me, but yes, I will marry you."

* * *

It was not the sort of jubilant acceptance he had hoped for, but she had said _yes_ , after all. It took a moment for her words to register, for him to realize that she was not turning him down, that she was in fact agreeing to give him, give _them_ this chance, and now that she had said yes, he found he did not know what to do. He wanted to throw his hands up in the air and let loose a victorious shout, he wanted to produce the little box from his pocket with a flourish and slip that diamond ring on her finger, he wanted to pull her into his arms and never let her go. They could stand there by that fence entwined for all eternity, freeze to death and turn to stone, and he would still be a happy man, for Ruth had said _yes._

Dimly he realized that several seconds had passed and Ruth, who was still crying, was looking at him strangely. Though he wasn't sure what the correct procedure was, for dealing with a woman who had just accepted his marriage proposal despite their having only ever gone out together on one single solitary date, he _was_ sure that if he didn't do something, and soon, Ruth might well change her mind.

"Thank you," he breathed, and she laughed at him, and he laughed at himself as he pulled her into his arms. It was perhaps the most ridiculous thing he could have said, but he was so bloody grateful, grateful to her for giving him this chance, grateful to the universe for putting her in his path, that he felt he had to give voice to that feeling.

She nestled herself into his embrace, her head tucked safely beneath his chin, her arms snaking around his waist, her softness molding itself around the hardness of his body. He felt her hands fisting in the material of his coat, pulling him closer still, and with a heart full to bursting with love of this woman he held her, rejoicing.

There was much to be decided. Details, some practical, some more emotional and therefore more delicate in nature, would have to be discussed and poured over. He would need to find out if the ring fit her, if it suited her, if she had any desire to wear it all. They would need to discuss living arrangements, and life on the Grid, and what sort of wedding they would like to have. More than anything, he needed to take her out to dinner again.

But all of that could wait, for now he was content to hold her, content in the knowledge that he had taken a risk and that, just this once, it had paid off. She had said _yes,_ and whatever lay in store, they would face it, together.


	2. Chapter 2

Ruth wasn't entirely sure how long they stood like that, clinging to one another by a fence in the churchyard. Ordinarily she would have been loath to indulge in such a display of affection in such an exposed location, but she wasn't particularly concerned about being discovered; the rest of the team had left long ago. Harry was warm and solid and here beside her, and however foolish it may have been, they were now _engaged_. She could spare a few more moments, to stand wrapped up in his arms, to immerse herself in the unexpected bliss of his embrace. When they had driven to the church together earlier in the day, each of them tense, sitting stiff and unspeaking in his car, she never could have imagined this particular turn of events, and she found herself feeling somehow both elated and terrified. His touch comforted her, though, soothed her fears however briefly, and so she nestled her cheek against his chest and let him hold her. After a time, however, Harry pulled away. He pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, and then he spoke.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" he asked.

How very typically Harry, she thought with a wry little smile; how very like him to jump straight from the single most intimate conversation they had ever had into talking about work as if it were no great leap. Compartmentalization had always been a strong suit of Harry's, though she suspected that this had less to do with his understanding of his own emotions and more to do with his fear of them. Work was easy; everything else was hard.

"No, it can wait," she told him. The moment he'd pulled away from her all those feelings of warmth and possibility had begun to fade, replaced by a million swirling questions, questions Ruth very much wanted to ask him, though she had no idea how to go about starting such a discussion. It wasn't as if she could just say _so, you do want to have sex with me, don't you, Harry? My place or yours?_ Though, if she were being honest, that question was at the top of her list. Even now, when he had asked her to marry him and she had said yes and everything was somehow falling into place he had not kissed her, had hidden his wants, his desires from her in that maddening way of his. They'd known one another for eight years, and yet this was the first time he had ever initiated any sort of physical contact with her; they had touched, a time or two, but it was always the brush of her fingertips against his hand, always her reaching out to reassure him. He was always the distant one, his emotions so much harder to read, if no less profound than hers. In the aftermath of his proposal she would have liked, very much, to have received some sort of reassurance from him, as regarded his feelings and his motivations for asking her such a personal question, but he wouldn't be her Harry if he didn't ignore those more difficult topics of conversation in favor of discussing the end of the world.

"No. We move on from this," he responded, not unkindly. "I don't want this to change things between on us, on the Grid. If there is something you need to tell me, then I would like to hear it."

Of course he was right, she realized. Though the path ahead might well be a bit rocky for them personally, professionally they would still rely on one another, and they would need to be able to maintain the level of trust and understanding they had developed over the last eight years. Any emotional upheaval they might experience at home could not be allowed to jeopardize the work they did. As always, the job would come first; not for the first time, Ruth found herself feeling rather resentful of the service. Sometimes, in her own private thoughts, she rather felt as if Harry were married to the service, and she herself was no more than his mistress, someone to whom he gave only a piece of himself, while in truth he belonged to another. It was perhaps a bit melodramatic, but she couldn't help the way she felt.

But if Harry were married to his job, then surely she was married to hers, for she spent very nearly as much time on the Grid as he did, and her personal relationships had suffered for it, just as his had done. In fact, they were uniquely suited to one another in that regard; they each understood the cost of the lives they led, the sacrifices necessary, in a way that no one outside of their brotherhood of spies could ever possibly understand.

So when he prompted her to continue, she cleared her throat, and did just that. She fumbled through her bag and produced the paperwork that proved, once and for all, that Nicholas Blake was a traitor. Ruth watched Harry carefully, as he reviewed the evidence and she explained the depth of Blake's deceit. She knew that Blake had been a friend to Harry, after a fashion, having served as Home Secretary for many years. They were members of the same club, and were known to share drinks there together of an evening. When Ruth returned from Cyprus, horror clinging to her like a miasma, Blake had been the one who had assured Harry that she would be returned to her old life without any fuss. There had been some trouble while she was away, she gathered, but Harry had never elaborated, and his relationship with Blake did not seem to have suffered much for it. She could only imagine how the news of Blake's treachery must have taken Harry, but for once, she was not left to muddle through on her own. For once, Harry told her how he was feeling.

"Ever feel like you just can't go on, Ruth?" he asked her sadly, his forearms braced against the fence as he stared out across the pasture before them.

Ruth stepped up close to him, and gave his arm a gentle squeeze. "Can't go on, must go on," she told him softly. This was familiar territory for her, that feeling of despair, that desire to simply give up and fade away; she had felt much the same, in the many months since her return. She had persevered, but not without help. The knowledge that Harry would be there on the Grid waiting for her each morning was the only thing that kept her going. On the bad days Ruth would remind herself firmly that however bad things had gotten, Harry was still fighting, and as long as he was standing on the wall, she was determined to stand beside him. Perhaps it was time, she thought, that she offered him the same comfort.

The moment she touched him, he turned to her, and the smile on his face was so very soft and so very sad that she could not restrain herself; she leaned forward on her tiptoes, and kissed him, very lightly, on the cheek.

"Let's go home, Harry," she murmured. This was going to take some getting used to, this newfound understanding between them, but Ruth had made her choice, and she was determined to see it through. Difficult though it might be, to break the habit of a lifetime and learn to indulge her impulses where he was concerned rather than hide them away, she was intent on pursuing this new relationship of theirs, to whatever end.

"I have to go back to the Grid," Harry told her apologetically, turning away from the fence and his ruminations and sliding one arm around her waist, pulling her close to him once more.

"That's what I meant," she told him, blushing.

* * *

Enthroned behind his desk on the Grid Harry sat in a pensive silence, staring at the dossier Ruth had given him on Nicholas Blake. This was not the first time Blake had betrayed him, betrayed the ideals of the service; Harry had not forgotten the Davie King incident, when Blake had decided that Harry's life, and the lives of everyone on his team, were an acceptable loss in exchange for his own political goals. That time, Harry had been able to work past the betrayal, had been able to understand, after a fashion, that Blake was only thinking of the greater good. This latest treachery was a bridge too far, however; Blake had given the order that cost Ros Myers her life, and he must be made to answer for it.

Justice would not be easy to mete out today, he knew. The powers that be had nothing to gain and everything to lose by revealing the depth of Nightingale's machinations. Harry knew he would never be able to convince Whitehall to pursue a case against Blake and his co-conspirators, and would instead be satisfied with allowing the man to live out his days in obscurity and anonymity. Such light punishment would not satisfy Harry Pearce, however.

 _Sometimes you have to send your enemies a message in the only language they understand. Blood for blood._

This would not be the first time that Harry had been forced to take matters into his own hands. He had killed before, quietly, under cover of darkness, had removed threats that few if any of his fellow citizens perceived, let alone understood. He had accepted that burden, had soaked his hands in the blood of his enemies, and had dragged himself home at the end of it, weary and uncertain about the state of his own humanity. Could he make such a sacrifice again?

He looked up from the pages in front of him and, as ever, his eyes sought Ruth out across the Grid. She was still wearing her funeral clothes, the soft black fabric of her blouse highlighting the pale smoothness of her skin. Her face was drawn and sad, her eyes focused intently on whatever piece of intelligence currently required her attention, and for a time he simply watched her, thinking.

Always before, Harry had been able to bear the responsibility for his occasional forays into violence with the knowledge that it was his choice, and the consequences would be his, and his alone. Now, though, he was not so sure. Now there was a woman, a woman he loved more than any other, a woman who cared for him, who encouraged him to be a better man. Could he do this thing, risk ruination and his own damnation, knowing that she depended on him? If he were ever found out, he would not be the only one to suffer. They would come for her, too, would insist that as Harry Pearce's confidante, his lover, his only friend, surely she must bear some of the brunt of the blame for his actions.

As he watched her she looked up, demonstrating her uncanny ability to sense his scrutiny, despite the distance between them. Her eyes landed on his face, and she began to watch him, too. She did not smile, did not blush, did not quickly turn her face away; she caught his gaze and held it, her face warm and soft, a question echoing in the depths of her ocean-blue eyes.

Perhaps he ought to look away, he mused as he watched her. Perhaps it would not do, now that they were about to make their relationship official, to be caught ogling his beloved across the Grid. Harry knew that people had been whispering about the pair of them for years, but it was one thing to endure unfounded whispers and another thing entirely to invite such speculation into his private life. He had been accused on at least one occasion of showing her favoritism, and he had been able to deny those allegations by pointing out that a) Ruth possessed the single finest intellect of any analyst currently employed by MI-5 and b) he was not sleeping with her, so how could his conduct be deemed inappropriate? One of those things was about to change.

His heart rate increased, as he considered that possibility while Ruth continued to watch him silently across the Grid. He had longed to share his bed with this woman for years, but, until this morning, he had not believed that such a thing would ever be possible. Now, though, it seemed not only possible, but an immediate result of their earlier conversation. Was that what she wanted? He couldn't help but wonder; couldn't help but doubt that a woman such as Ruth, kind and warm and gentle, beautiful and entirely too young for him, could ever wish to share her life with a man such as him. She had said _yes,_ though, and surely that ought to be enough reassurance for him.

While his thoughts had lingered on Ruth, on the astounding reality of their future together, she had risen gracefully to her feet, and was even now walking towards him.

* * *

It was not uncommon for Ruth to look up and find Harry watching her from across the Grid. These quiet moments, when their eyes would meet and they would watch one another in silence and denial, were an almost daily occurrence. There was a darkness in him now, though; she could see his doubt, could see the worry etched into every line of his dear sweet face. And she knew that while her colleagues could not read him so easily, they were not blind, and if she and Harry continued in this fashion for much longer they would draw entirely too much attention to themselves. And so she rose, and crossed the Grid determinedly, to find out what was the matter with him.

She didn't mind the way he watched her; though sometimes it made her uncomfortable, to find herself the sole focus of his laser-like attention, it had always made her proud, too, had always warmed her heart to know that he felt as drawn to her as she to him. Even when things were difficult, even when she hated him, just a little, for being the driving force behind the ruination of her life, she had looked forward to these quiet moments when she would lift her eyes and find his gaze locked on her face in silent contemplation. What would it be like, she wondered, to endure that gaze close up, with no distance between them, without even the barrier of their clothes to separate them one from the other? She felt the heat rising in her cheeks as she slid open the door to his office, and stepped inside.

"Harry," she said softly, announcing her presence as she entered his space. Still watched her, and still her heart fluttered in her chest.

"Can I help you, Ruth?" he asked, his voice as low and soft as hers had been.

A thousand answers to that question leapt to mind, each more inappropriate than the last, but Ruth valiantly held her tongue, and settled on the least inflammatory response.

"Are you all right, Harry?" she asked, her fingertips drawing nonsense patterns against the edge of his desk. At this close range, the heat of his dark eyes was almost more than she could stand; she wanted more than anything else to cross the space between them, to touch him, to find out just what it might be like, to give into his desire for her, and hers for him. _Not now,_ she chided herself. _Not here. Not yet._ "You seem…troubled."

And he did seem troubled; there was a darkness in him, and when her eyes flickered down to his desk she could clearly see the dossier she'd given him earlier in the day. He had been sitting here alone brooding on the nature of betrayal; perhaps that was all that was troubling him. If it was, if he were only bothered by brutality and mortality and the loss of his own faith in his colleagues, Ruth thought she might be able to help him. Might be able to shoulder some of his burden. She _wanted_ to help; she wanted to be the person he turned to, the person he needed, the person he held in the dark of the night.

Harry sighed, and rose from his chair. The blinds that covered his windows were open and offered them no privacy from the Grid and the prying eyes of their colleagues, but still he approached her, moving slowly, almost warily until he stood beside her, close enough for his shoulder to brush against hers in a subtle, comforting sort of way.

"I've got a meeting this afternoon, and I don't know how late I'll be," he told her in his soft, honey-laced voice. "But I was thinking, it might be nice if…what I mean to say is…would you like to have dinner with me, tomorrow night?"

There was something absolutely adorable about a hopeful, uncertain Harry Pearce. He was a mass of contradictions was Harry; confident and commanding, hesitant and sorrowful, sexy and charming and adorable and damn near infuriating. And whatever he was, whatever he had done, she loved him for it.

"I would like to, very much," she told him, smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

They arranged to meet for dinner at Ruth's home the following evening, as it was Saturday and both of them were rostered off from the Grid for the entire weekend. Ruth had gone to her local market, and was standing in front of the wine selection trying very hard to make up her mind when the call came in from Thames House. She answered her mobile with a sinking feeling in her gut; it seemed too much to hope that, just this once, she might be allowed to get through one bloody day without the demands of the Grid superseding her own desires. It was as if she could feel the lovely dinner she'd planned with Harry slipping through her fingers in much the same way all her previous hopes and dreams for them had done.

"Ruth? It's Tariq."

 _Of course it is,_ she thought glumly; that poor boy had no sense of timing. He always seemed to be the one who was elected to interrupt Harry and Ruth when they were in the midst of any sort of personal communication, and it stood to reason that he would be the one who would interrupt them now, who would drag them onto the Grid and call a halt to all their plans.

"What is it, Tariq?" she sighed. Try though she might she couldn't help but feel a twinge of irritation with him. She knew it wasn't his fault, knew that he had no idea she was in the midst of shopping for her dinner with Harry, that she would rather be out picking up wine and food and a nice new dress than resolving whatever infernal crisis had merited his calling her on her day off.

"When was the last time you heard from Harry?"

Whatever she had been expecting him to say it certainly wasn't that, and all of Ruth's feelings of annoyance disappeared, swallowed beneath a growing tide of fear.

"Yesterday afternoon," she answered at once. "He had a meeting at Whitehall, said it was supposed to run late."

On the other end of the call, Tariq sighed. "That's the thing. We've just had a call from the new Home Secretary, he's livid because Harry's not answering his mobile. The HS says there was no meeting yesterday."

It was not surprising, really, that the HS should be cross about not being able to reach Harry; Ruth had known Harry Pearce for eight years now, and in that time he had only been unavailable on a sparse handful of occasions, and each of those had been disastrous in its own way. She was frightened for him now, terribly worried about what sort of trouble he had gotten himself into, but beneath that fear lay something darker, something more insidious in nature. Harry had _lied_ to her about his meeting in Whitehall, and had then promptly vanished into the ether, not twenty-four hours after asking her to marry him. The implications of that series of events left her hands shaking and her heart pounding out a miserable beat in her chest.

"It's probably nothing," Ruth said, though neither she nor Tariq believed a word of it. "I'll try to ring him."

"How long do we wait, Ruth? I mean, should I call everyone in and try to find him?"

Ruth glanced down at her mobile screen to check the time. Harry was due to arrive at her home in just under three hours. Technically, this was a decision for their Section Chief, not a senior analyst, but they had buried their Section Chief the day before, and when it came to matters involving Harry, it seemed that Ruth had become the designated decision maker. What should she do? Bring everyone in and turn the not inconsiderable resources of the Grid loose on a full-scale manhunt, only to find Harry safe and well, holed up somewhere plotting how best to gently inform his new fiancé that he was not interested in going through with his proposal, after all? Or should she wait, only to find him in a ditch the next day, with a bullet in his back and a gift for her clutched in his cold, stiff hands?

 _Get a grip,_ she chided herself firmly. Wherever Harry had gone, it was clear that he had started out with some sort of a plan. He had lied to her, to all of them, in order to buy himself some time alone, but he had also arranged to meet her afterwards; perhaps she ought to give him an opportunity to play out this farce he had orchestrated. When he came waltzing into her home in a few hours, she fully intended to give him the bollocking of his life. _If he does come back._

"Give it some time," she advised. "I'll try ringing him, too. If we haven't heard from him by eight o'clock"- he was due at hers at seven – "then we can bring everyone in."

Tariq agreed, though not enthusiastically, and then Ruth was left alone once more, clutching her mobile, staring at the wine, wondering when her life had got quite so complicated.

* * *

In the aftermath of his whirlwind trip to Scotland, Harry returned home, took a shower, and changed into a fresh suit. He was trying very hard not to spend too much time thinking about what he had done, about the quiet, well-orchestrated murder of Nicholas Blake. As much as he believed that it was just, to make Blake pay for his many sins, he could not shake the feeling that he himself had crossed a line. He had lied to his team, to _Ruth,_ had slipped away into the darkness to murder a man in cold blood, a man who counted him a friend, a man who had been given no chance to defend himself. Harry had sat in this man's house and watched him die, clawing at the carpet in a desperate bid to breathe. That was an image he saw every time he closed his eyes, but it was not the sort of thing he wanted to ponder for very long when he was preparing himself to go and meet Ruth for dinner.

As he drove across town, heading for the little flat that Ruth called home these days, he could not help but consider the contradictions of his own life, his own nature. He was a man who believed in the rule of law, but who took justice – and revenge – into his own hands when it suited him. He felt himself drowning in darkness, and yet he possessed such a hopeful spirit that he had proposed to the woman he loved before ever actually telling her that he loved her. He was at this very moment looking forward to his dinner with Ruth with a nearly gleeful anticipation, and yet at the same time he felt the heavy weight of guilt settling on his conscience. Though he had not intended it at the time, he had begun their engagement with a lie, and he would have to continue to tell that lie tonight when he reached Ruth's home. The knowledge of that deception nearly crushed all his hopes, as he wondered what manner of a man could do such a thing to the woman he loved, to a woman who had suffered so much, and so often at his own hands.

There were no answers to the questions he asked himself; he did not know what lay in store for him, for Ruth, for them together. He could only resolve to do better in the future, to bring her into his confidences insofar as it was safe for her, and shield her whenever possible from the consequences of his sins. It would have to be enough, though he worried, deep in his heart, that she would expect more from him. Before he realized it, he had arrived at her home.

Ruth lived in a small block of flats on a quiet, shady lane. He parked his car and mounted the steps, and rang up to her flat. She buzzed him in without conversation of any sort, and he stepped through the front door, making his way ever nearer to her. It occurred to him as he walked slowly down the hall, heading for her flat, that he had committed a rather serious breach of etiquette in showing up for dinner empty handed. With neither flowers nor wine in hand he was concerned that he might perhaps make a less than stellar impression on this, the first time she had invited him to her home. The truth was, while ordinarily he would never had made such a misstep, his thoughts had been elsewhere this day, and thus the more mundane details of his life, those not related to murder and vengeance, had gone unnoticed.

He knocked upon her door, and had only to wait for a moment before she appeared. Over the last day or so he had indulged himself, more than once, in speculation about how this evening would go. What she would look like, how she would smile, whether he would be brave enough to hold her once again, perhaps to offer her more of himself than he had ever given her before, perhaps to receive such a gift in return. In his imaginings she was blushing and sweet and gentle, and he was charming and roguish, and together they were everything he had always dreamed.

Never once had he even considered the possibility that when Ruth opened her door she would be cross with him, and yet as he stepped into her flat this evening there were no soft, warm smiles radiating from her familiar features. Her eyes were hard and dark as she watched him, and he could almost feel an icy breeze billowing off her. Try though he might he could not come up with any possible explanation for her hostility; surely she wouldn't be angry with him for forgetting to bring her flowers? Ruth herself offered no clarification; once he was inside, she closed and locked the door behind him, turned, and made her way down the short hall leading to her kitchen without a word. Like a well-chastised puppy Harry followed along in her wake, all bemused and so focused on trying to ascertain the cause of her distress that he did not stop to take in his surroundings.

If he had, he might have noticed some things. He might have noticed that unlike the little house she'd lived in before Cotterdam, this flat was dark, and mostly windowless. He might have noticed that the clutter that had so filled her previous home, the countless mementos and photographs that spoke of a rich, somewhat eccentric life, was conspicuously absent. This flat, while tastefully decorated, was missing that beautiful sense of disarray that had been so characteristic of her home on the two occasions he'd had cause to visit her in the past. And perhaps, had he noticed this, he might have been concerned.

As it was, he was too preoccupied with the flat's resident to pay much attention to the furnishings. In the kitchen Ruth had taken her wine glass in hand and was currently leaning back against the counter, surveying him with that cool, steely-eyed gaze of hers. Not for the first time, he wished he had the ability to read her thoughts, to know what was happening in the labyrinthine twists and turns of her mind.

"Have you spoken to the Home Secretary today?" she asked him.

* * *

Ruth absolutely bloody hated this. She hated playing the part of the nagging wife, demanding to know where he'd been and ordering him to turn out his pockets and prove that he hadn't gone round to the pub with his mates when he was supposed to be visiting his sick mother or something equally mundane and absurd. It wasn't in her nature, to make such demands. Generally, when it came to romantic relationships, she accepted what was offered, and when the inevitable implosion came she was neither surprised nor particularly devastated. Harry was different, though. Not only did she love him, she relied on him in every way. He wasn't just a boyfriend covering up some mild infidelity, he was her boss, and wherever he had been, whatever the reason for his deception, the implications of it went far beyond ruining their first dinner together in nearly four years.

When she asked her first question, his brow furrowed in rather obvious confusion.

"No," he answered slowly. Before he could continue, she interrupted him.

"Perhaps you ought to check your mobile," she suggested. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the offending device.

"Christ, Ruth, I'm sorry, it's dead. I didn't realize."

He sounded genuine enough, and she was inclined to believe him. This wasn't the biggest issue facing them this evening, anyway, and Ruth wasn't interested in bickering with him about it.

"What did the HS want?" he asked, tucking the mobile back in his jacket pocket.

"I'm not sure, Harry, but he did mention that you weren't scheduled for a meeting at Whitehall yesterday."

There it was. As she watched the realization slowly dawned on his face, the confused expression he'd worn since entering her flat fading beneath something that looked very much like sorrow. His shoulders slumped, and his plump lips formed that little pout she loved so well.

"Where have you been, Harry?" she asked him in a soft voice. She had known this man for a long time, and as much as she might want to be furious with him, she knew that wherever he had gone, he had not intended to hurt her. Whatever he had done, it was eating away at him, and she could see it from where she stood on the other side of the room. What she wanted, in that moment, was to pull him into her arms, to rest her cheek against his chest and tell him that it was going to be all right. Ruth knew better, though. Just now he did not such comfort; he needed to make his confession, and she needed to hear it, and they needed to decide how best to move forward, together.

* * *

There was no accusation in Ruth's voice when she spoke, and that wounded him more than if she had raged at him. Anger was much easier for him to bear; the disappointment, the understanding, the gentle kindness she was offering him now just reminded him, once again, that she was entirely too good for him, in every way.

The question remained; could he tell her the truth? He wanted to, wanted to unburden himself to her, wanted to crush her against his chest, wanted to feel her heart beating in time with his, wanted to cleanse himself beneath the waves of her. And was this not what he had signed on for, in proposing to her, in asking her to share her life with him? How could he ask her to make such a monumental decision without being honest with her, without giving her the chance to see the truth of his nature, and turn around and run if she were so inclined?

"I'm sorry, Ruth," he breathed. He saw her flinch when he spoke, saw the doubt flickering in the depths of her expressive, glorious eyes. "I went to see Nicholas Blake."

Ruth sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth, and gave a little nod. For a time she did not speak; as he waited for her recrimination he could not help but think that this woman, this beautiful, broken woman, knew him better than anyone else in the world. She anticipated his desires, and had done for years, had stood beside him through darkness and pain, and Harry knew that she would understand the meaning behind the words he refused to say.

"And was he breathing, when you left?" she asked him after a time. Her tone, her expression, her very posture told him that she knew the answer to that question, and yet she had to ask it anyway. She needed to hear him say it, and, for both their sakes, he needed to ask for her absolution.

"No."

* * *

It was no more than Ruth expected. She gave him another little nod, acknowledging both the fact that he had been brave enough to tell her to the truth, and that this bravery had cost him dearly. He was not a man who shared his secrets easily, her Harry. He had lived too long on his own, had lost too many friends, had been betrayed one time too many, and as a result he was not the sort of person who readily offered up information about himself and his dealings. And what he had just admitted to her was not only illegal, but many would argue it was unethical, as well. The woman Ruth had been when she'd first met him all those years ago would have called it wrong, and washed her hands of it, of him, of the whole bloody business.

She was not the same woman these days, though. Over time Ruth had learned the cost of her beliefs, had felt her own personal morals slowly shifting as the naiveté of her youth gave way to the jaded reality of her life as a spy. What Nicholas Blake had done, in supporting Nightingale, in ordering the bombing of the hotel that had claimed the lives of Ros Meyers and Andrew Lawrence, among others, was wrong. It was the kind of wrong that could not be allowed to stand. And she knew, too, that he had gotten away with it, that no court on earth would hold him accountable for the deaths he'd caused. Harry had made him answer for his sins. And really, could she expect any less from him?

They stood like that, staring each other down from opposite ends of her kitchen, both of them weary, both of them absolutely bloody exhausted by the endless twistings and turnings and machinations that comprised their lives of late. The firm foundations beneath their feet had turned to sand, and Ruth realized that she had a choice to make. She could cling to Harry, could allow him to hold her up and support her, and she could do the same for him. Or she could turn her back on him, could pronounce him too dangerous, too heartless to share her life.

Ruth knew what she wanted. She knew what she believed, and she knew Harry.

"Good," she said.

"Ruth," he sighed her name, confused once more. Clearly he had not expected her to respond to the revelation of the violent way he'd spent his day off in such a casual manner, but she was tired of holding him at arm's length, tired of trying to live up to the impossible expectations she'd set for herself long ago. Sometimes the ends justified the means, and, just this once, she was willing to let it pass.

"Have a seat, Harry. I've made shepherd's pie."


	4. Chapter 4

So far, this evening had not gone to plan. In fact, it had gone _spectacularly_ off the rails somewhere along the way. From the moment he arrived Harry had felt wrong-footed and uncertain, the little box weighing heavy in his pocket. He had had been so thrown by Ruth's rather cool demeanor towards him, so surprised when she asked him to confirm his whereabouts earlier in the day, so completely flabbergasted when he told her the truth and her only response had been a rather casual _good,_ that he found himself loath to speak, lest he break the uneasy truce that had sprung up between them. They sat together, on opposite sides of her small kitchen table, and the distance between them seamed to him to be as immense as the ocean, just now. Ruth had cooked a fine supper, and poured them both a glass of fine red wine, but she had no warm, soft smiles to share with him now. She kept her gaze firmly on her plate, and she did not speak a word.

And how was Harry meant to respond to such an awkward silence? What words could he possibly say to set her mind at ease, to coax out one of those charming smiles he loved so well? Of late it seemed to Harry that every time he opened his mouth to speak to her something went wrong, and she always seemed to leave him looking more sorrowful than when he'd begun. The situation between them now was delicate; he'd proposed to her yesterday, and confessed to committing murder today, and he wasn't sure why exactly she hadn't thrown him out of her home yet, but he was determined to stay for as long as he was able.

So Harry did not speak. He ate his supper, recalling a time years before when Ruth had arranged to have food parcels delivered to his home, so that he would be able to survive on more than tuna and crisps and whiskey. Briefly he contemplated reminding her of this fact, but in the end he decided against it, not wanting to push his luck. Those few days he had spent under suspension were memorable for another reason, one that had nothing to do with food; it was, as near as he could reckon it, the first time that he had ever felt the warmth of Ruth's skin beneath his fingertips. And if he remembered it so clearly, in such crystalline detail, it stood to reason that she would recall it, as well. To raise such a reminiscence might serve to remind her of the quiet yearning that had bound them together, or it might well spook her, might give the ceaseless churning of her mind cause to wonder what his motivations were, in speaking to her thus. In all honesty, he had come here tonight with high hopes for them, hopes that perhaps he might offer her a kiss, and she might accept it, and in this way they might move past the wall they'd erected between them. He could not bear to have those hopes crushed so early in the evening, and so he did not mention it.

He would have to say something, though, he realized. If they really intended to be married one day, they would have to find a way to bloody _speak_ to one another, to sit alone in a room together and not find themselves suffocated by loneliness and doubt. He had dared to hope that some semblance of the old Ruth - the somewhat bumbling, chatty girl she had been when they first met - might put in an appearance this evening. She could be downright adorable, when she got all flustered and the words poured forth from her lips unchecked. The color would rise in her cheeks, and her blue eyes would sparkle, and the desire to kiss her that he always felt when she was near would skyrocket to new heights. There was no sign of the old Ruth tonight, however; this was the new Ruth, the darker, sadder, quieter woman who had returned to him from Cyprus amidst death and pain. He loved this Ruth just as much as the old one, though for different reasons; she had grown, had learned, had changed, and somewhere along the way she had become fused with his very soul, become his partner, his confidante, his only friend. Had he ruined their tenuous relationship, by pressing her for more? Was there no going back from this? Could it be, he wondered, that this dream he'd harbored for them was no more than a dream, a phantom to be cherished in the darkness but disappearing like a wisp of smoke in the harsh light of day?

 _For Christ's sake, man_ , he told himself firmly. _She's just a woman, not a bloody riddle. Talk to her._

And so he did.

"Are you all right, Ruth?" he asked her softly.

* * *

This was un- _bloody-_ bearable, as far as Ruth was concerned; she had dared to hope, before Harry arrived, that he might have had a plan. She had dared to hope that when he came to her that night he would be as charming and commanding as he had been when they first met, and that she would be able to simply let go, and allow him to lead her through these awkward first steps of their new relationship. As it was, however, she was not blessed with the Harry of old. This was Harry as she had come to know him, as he had been since her return from Cyprus; he was solicitous and gentle and quiet, and he never pushed for more, and he never made demands of her. The somewhat bombastic man she'd known before had become withdrawn and hesitant; not in a professional capacity, but in a personal one. Ruth sometimes got the feeling that he had been hurt one too many times, and never truly recovered.

It had filled her with hope, to know that he was once more feeling brave where she was concerned. She had thought that, having found the confidence to propose to her in the first place, Harry might have realized that she was not running from him, that she would not shatter like glass at the first provocation, that she was here, and his for the asking. It seemed he had not realized this, however, or if he had, he simply wasn't asking, and that concerned her. Was he not interested? Was this not what he wanted? Had she misunderstood, perhaps, his intentions when he asked her to marry him? The rather horrible notion that he meant what he'd told her in the churchyard, that he only wanted to be married so that he would not be alone, had sunk its teeth into her, and it refused to let go.

The longer he went without speaking to her, the more certain she became that she had made a mistake. This might be enough for Harry, this sitting here quietly and sharing a meal and then going their separate ways, but it was not, and would not ever be, enough for Ruth. For years she had dreamed about sharing her life, her heart, her body with him, and she could not tolerate a future in which they were hardly more than housemates. Such a fate would break her heart, break her spirit, and she knew that she might not ever recover from the devastation of all her hopes.

So Ruth sat, and worried, and played with her supper, until Harry's gentle voice broke her reverie.

"Are you all right, Ruth?" he asked her in that tender, warm tone of voice she had missed so dearly.

 _Am I all right?_ She wondered, taking a long sip of wine to buy herself a moment to think. _No, I'm not bloody all right. And I won't be until you kiss me, you stupid man._

"I can't help thinking we've made a mistake, Harry," she confessed. Across the table she watched as his face fell, and though it hurt, to see him look so wounded, it helped her, too, to know that he was as troubled by the notion as was she. "I mean, look at us. We can't even talk to one another."

"It's only been a few minutes," he protested.

Ruth shook her head, took another sip of wine. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say," she explained eventually. "I mean, what do people even talk about, over dinner?"

It was a genuine question; Ruth had not been on a date since her return from Cyprus. Before that, there was only George, and one single, glorious, too-brief dinner with Harry himself, and before that, well, before there were years of quiet Friday nights spent either on the Grid or home alone with her cats. It had been a long time since Ruth had dated, and dated well, and she was feeling more than a little lost.

"Well, I imagine they talk about their days," Harry suggested. Having finished his meal he leaned back in his chair, cradling his wine glass in his hand and regarding her with a wary, if somewhat amused sort of expression. She could read that amusement in the gentle uptick of his full, pouty lips, and that amusement buoyed her confidence; if he was feeling comfortable enough to look at her this way, perhaps they might find their way through, after all.

It was on the tip of her tongue to lean forward and rather playfully ask him, _and how was your day, Harry?_ But then she remembered, remembered how he'd spent his day, and the urge to tease him left her all at once.

"Do you want to talk to me about your day, Harry?" she asked him softly.

He sighed and shifted in his chair, putting down his wine glass and clasping his hands together on the table before him.

"Not particularly, no," he admitted. "But," he added, before she could go feeling sorry for the pair of them again, "You could tell me how _your_ day was instead."

Ruth smiled, just a little, and shook her head. "You don't want to hear about that."

"Of course I do," he countered. "What did you do today, Ruth?"

 _Infernal bloody man_ , she thought fondly; just the way he was looking at her, as if he could see straight through her, set her cheeks to burning.

"I-I went to the shops," she said finally.

"Did you buy that dress?" he prompted.

Ruth looked down at herself, still blushing. "Yes," she admitted. _Yes,_ she had purchased a new dress for the occasion, a soft grey dress with a somewhat more daring neckline than she usually favored, one that clung to her frame and went rather well with her tall black boots. She had resisted temptation and foregone her usual cardigan, leaving her arms bare beneath the short sleeves, and she was glad of it now, thankful for the way Harry's eyes roamed over her appreciatively.

"I like it," he said in that same smooth tone of voice, the one that turned her insides to butter and left her tongue-tied and reeling.

"Harry-"

"You look beautiful, Ruth. You always do."

* * *

 _This is more like it,_ he thought, watching the color rising in her cheeks. She had come back to life, somehow; all it had taken was one little question to get the ball rolling, and now she was with him, talking and blushing and smiling at him shyly from beneath her thick eyelashes.

"Where do we go from here, Harry?" she asked him.

"Well, I was thinking first we ought to finish our wine and then, if you're so inclined, I think I'd rather like to dance with you," he responded. Yes, he would like that very much; he could move her coffee table and clear a space in the sitting room, and they could wind themselves around each other until all he could see, all he could feel was her. That would suit him just fine.

"That sounds lovely, Harry," she was blushing again, he noted with some amusement, "but I meant more…with the marriage thing. How quickly do we move here?"

Ruth was worrying her napkin between her fingertips the way she had done all those years before, when he had spoken to her quietly of his dreams of the Grand Tour, and the anxiety had come pouring out of her in waves. In fact, Ruth was nearly always fidgeting in his presence, though she usually had a pen or a file in hand, and not a napkin. _Why do I make you so nervous, Ruth?_ He wondered.

It seemed to Harry that he needed to move very carefully here. He would have happily married her tomorrow, taken her into his bed, into his home that very night, but he knew that Ruth was more circumspect in nature. Such an answer would only make her uncomfortable, and he was loath to loose the geniality he had carefully begun to cultivate in her.

"As fast or as slow as you like," he responded.

"That's not an answer, Harry," she chided him. Still her fingers moved ceaselessly over the napkin, and a little crease formed between her eyebrows as she frowned at him. She needed something more concrete, he realized; Ruth, his darling Ruth, was the sort of person who needed a plan. She needed order, needed a goal to reach for, and she was clearly uneasy with the idea of an open-ended arrangement between them. He had asked her to be his wife and she had accepted, and now she needed to know how they planned to make that dream a reality.

"I don't have timetable in mind, honestly." He finished off his wine, and in stroke of boldness, reached across the table to cover one of her fidgeting hands with his own. "I was thinking it might be nice if we did this a bit more often, if we shared a few more meals, if we talked a bit more, and then, when you're comfortable, we can talk about setting a date."

 _And when you're comfortable, Ruth, when you're ready, I am going to take you into my arms, and I am going to make you scream my name._

"That...that would be nice, Harry." She was staring down at the place where their hands were joined; her skin was soft, but cold, and Harry found himself quite suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to rise from his chair, to draw her to him, to share his warmth with her. If he had his way, Ruth would never be cold again.

"How about that dance, then?"

* * *

 _This is bizarre,_ Ruth thought as she fussed about with the record player, listening to Harry dragging her heavy coffee table to the corner of the sitting room. Her hands were shaking as she fit the needle onto the record; she was about to dance with Harry Pearce, here, in her sitting room, on a chilly Saturday night after sharing a meal with him. And one day soon, she was going to marry him, to come home to him at the end of every day. It was strange, and exciting, and terrifying, all at once. Ruth wasn't quite sure how they had gone from barely speaking to this, but she was thankful for it, all the same.

As the music began to play Harry came to stand beside her; he snaked one strong arm around her waist, and drew her away from the bookshelf, and into the center of the room. They found their way into a dance hold, sliding together like two pieces of a puzzle locking into place. Ruth took a deep breath, and let him lead her, let him hold her, let the warmth of his body soak through her dress and fill her up with longing for him. As they swayed softly in time to the music he gazed down at her, and the heat spilling out of his hazel eyes left her breathless. She wanted, very much, for him to kiss her. She wanted him to kiss her, and she did not ever want him to stop.

They had only truly kissed once before, on that terrible grey morning when she left him by the docks. That kiss had been born of desperation, the knowledge that she would never see him again making her bold. Ruth was not feeling particularly bold tonight; though they had made some progress, established some parameters for their new relationship, she was still not certain of her position with him. If he wanted to kiss her, she would welcome it, but she would not make the first move.

And so she waited, and they danced, drawing ever nearer to one another.

* * *

This was a kind of heavenly torture, Harry mused, a delicious, sweet, aching torture. To hold her in his arms, close enough that he could smell the warm, earthy scent of her hair, that he could feel the softness of her breasts brushing against his chest, the gentle swaying of her hips in perfect harmony with his own, was killing him slowly. All he wanted, in that moment, was to kiss her. He wanted to bend his head, to capture her lips with his own, and devour her whole.

He hesitated, though; she was clearly confused, about what their future together might look like, and though he dearly wished to show her all the dreams he held for them, he did not want to overwhelm her with the force of his desire for her. He prevaricated, as he guided her in a slow, languorous circle there in her living room; one moment he was sure that his chance had come, but the next she would look away, blushing, and he would become convinced that he needed to wait.

But the song was drawing to a close, and he was running out of time. And so he took a deep breath, and took a chance.

The moment she looked up at him, he bowed his head, and, ever so gently, brushed her lips with his. It lasted no more than half a second, but when he pulled back he saw the warmth in her ocean-blue eyes, saw the ruby-red bow of her lips form a surprised little _O_ , and his self-control snapped.

He lifted one hand to cradle her cheek, and brushed his thumb softly across the rise of her cheekbone as he leaned in again, and this time, she was ready. They did not crash together; they simply tumbled into this kiss, her arms snaking around his neck, her fingers toying with the soft curls at the back of his head as he ran his tongue across the seam of her lips, and she opened her mouth to him with a sigh of deep contentment.


	5. Chapter 5

It was the shrill ringing sound of her mobile that jarred Ruth back to her senses. At some point they had tumbled onto the sofa together; Harry was sitting upright, with Ruth straddling his lap. Her dress had ridden up as she knelt over him, and his broad, strong hands were gently gripping her thighs, setting her on fire with need of him. For her part Ruth was cradling his face in her hands, the tips of her fingers rubbing gently against the stubble along his jawline, dipping down to follow the path of his throat to his collarbones and back up again, a journey she had longed to make from the very first moment she ever saw him without his tie.

This was not the most dignified position, and Ruth knew it, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to care. The kiss went on and on, a never-ending onslaught as each of them forgot to breathe, and drowned in one another. His lips were soft and warm, pressed against her own, his tongue insistent as it tangled with hers. Sitting above him like this, Ruth could feel his hardness trapped between her legs, straining up to brush against her despite the layers of clothing that separated them one from the other. She ground down against him rather shamelessly, drawing a heady moan from deep in Harry's throat, a sound she swallowed eagerly as she continued to kiss him.

She had lost all sense of time and place, too distracted by the feeling of Harry's warm hands against her bare skin, by the heady knowledge that he was hard and ready for her and that it would only take the slightest bit of effort on their parts for him to bury himself inside her and make her scream. And she wanted that, wanted it so badly that if she had taken a moment to stop and think she would have been shocked by the strength of her own desire.

As it was, the ringing of her mobile called a halt to proceedings; she whispered her apologies against his lips and clambered off of him as gracefully as she could manage. As she turned away from him to head off towards the kitchen and retrieve her mobile she saw him sitting, hands on his knees, drawing in deep breaths and staring at her with such hunger that she very nearly disregarded the call entirely and flung herself at him once again. Ruth had always known, somewhere deep in her heart, that this passion was lurking, waiting for the right moment to make itself known, to burst forth from their usually rather circumspect manner and leave them both cracked and bleeding in its wake.

She stumbled into the kitchen, and scooped her mobile up off the counter.

"Hello?" she gasped, shocked by how breathless her own voice sounded.

"Ruth? It's Tariq."

 _Oh, for God's sake, man!_ She thought glumly. Of course it was bloody Tariq.

"What can I do for you?" she asked, hoping she didn't sound as cross as she felt just now. Harry came walking into the kitchen, leaning up against the doorway and watching her with a lazy little smile on his face, a smile that she couldn't help but return, though her cheeks were burning as she recalled the way they'd been intertwined, only a few moments before.

"Er…it's eight o'clock. I was wondering if you'd heard from Harry."

It took a moment, for her to realize what he was talking about, but then it all came flooding back; she'd promised to ring Tariq if she located their wayward boss, and in all the confusion surrounding his arrival at her flat and all the beautiful madness that had ensued over the last hour, she had completely forgotten.

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry. He's fine, nothing to worry about." Harry's brow furrowed in confusion, but she gave him a look that said _I'll explain later,_ and he nodded, satisfied.

"So you've spoken to him?" Tariq asked skeptically.

 _Until about thirty seconds ago, I had my tongue down his throat._ At least she still possessed the presence of mind not to speak that particular thought aloud.

"I have. He's fine, Tariq."

"Make sure he rings the HS in the morning," Tariq said.

Ruth rolled her eyes, even though the poor young man couldn't see her, even though he had no way of knowing what he'd interrupted.

"I will. Good night, Tariq," she said, and promptly hung up the phone before he could engage her in any further discussion. She wanted, very much, to turn the mobile off, to toss it in the bin and leap on Harry once more, but she resisted the temptation. Only just.

"Everything all right?" Harry asked her in his warmest, softest, most appealing voice. He began to walk slowly towards her; _prowl_ might have been a better adjective, she mused as she watched him. He was definitely prowling, a hunter drawing ever nearer to his prey. And Ruth was caught beneath his stare, trapped in place as she willed him to come to her, to sink his teeth into her and devour her whole.

"Tariq was about to send out a search party," she told him, wringing her hands together in front of her to stop them shaking. Finally Harry reached her, his hands snaking out to wrap around her waist, drawing her once more into the circle of his arms. He loomed over her; he was only a few inches taller but in moments like this the sheer overwhelming force of his personal charm made him somehow larger than life, and the strength of the hands that clasped her to him was not to be denied.

"You need to ring the HS, in the morning," she continued, suddenly at a loss for how to proceed. It was clear what Harry intended, but as much as Ruth had enjoyed their snog on the sofa, as deeply as she longed for him, their momentary reprieve had jolted her back to her senses, and she was once more uncertain. Not uncertain about whether or not she wanted him, or whether or not he wanted her; no, there could be no doubt on either of those fronts. What worried her now was simply this; they had spent eight long years dancing around one another, dreaming about what it might be like when they came together, denying themselves everything save longing glances and a few, too-brief caresses. What would happen to them, she wondered, when they finally came together? Would the reality live up to expectation? Was this passion enough to sustain them, or would they soon grow bored with one another, when that which they had so long desired became familiar, and no longer taboo? Couples break up every day, she knew, for a thousand different reasons, and she couldn't help but wonder how she would fare, if she and Harry should one day fall apart. He had spoken of marriage before they'd ever even truly come together; how could he be so sure that they could last, when they'd not yet even begun?

Harry seemed to sense her sudden change in mood; though he continued to hold her he did not try to reignite the flames that had all but consumed them back in the sitting room.

"I've had a _wonderful_ time tonight, Ruth," he told her softly, brushing his lips against her temple.

Ruth sighed and leaned further into his embrace, resting her cheek against his chest and breathing in the scent of him. She sensed that he had been trying to tell her something, that the subtle emphasis he had placed on the word _wonderful_ had been meant as a reminder of all they shared before. _Something wonderful that was never said;_ could it be, she wondered, that he was trying, in his own careful, considered way, to tell her that he loved her? She hoped so.

"Me, too," she answered.

"I meant what I said," he continued. "We don't have to rush into anything. This is just the beginning."

* * *

It had taken a nearly superhuman act of will to pull himself away from her that night in her kitchen. At the time he had been still half-hard and aching for her, but he knew, could tell by the tension in her shoulders and the question in her eyes that taking her to bed just then was not the best course of action, however much he might have wanted it. They needed more time; _she_ needed more time, and he needed more opportunities to show her that however badly he might need her he was willing to wait until she was ready, until she was comfortable, until she was sure. Harry needed Ruth, needed her by his side, needed her counsel and her smiles and everything she had, but he would never take more than she was willing to give.

And so he kissed her cheek, and bid her good night, and dragged himself away despite the riotous clamoring of his body, begging to hold her again.

Sunday was a quiet day for him; he took Scarlet for a very long walk, and rang the Home Secretary, who as it turned out did not actually seem to want much of anything at all. The man had questioned him briefly on the status of the Nightingale investigation and his own efforts to replace Ros Myers, and Harry had provided just about as much information on those topics as he could stomach before agreeing to meet with the HS later in the week, once he was more settled.

Truth be told, Harry and Ruth had already selected a new agent for their team, a young man called Dimitri Levendis. He had come to their attention when they first began to comb through the personnel files after Jo's death. Harry and Ruth had sat together in his office for hours pouring over files, talking quietly to one another as they struggled to rebuild not just their team, but their faith in one another. Those discussions had given Harry an opportunity to share some of his past with Ruth; he talked about his own recruitment into the Service, and his time in the Army, and she had watched him with a weary little smile hovering just out of reach. Together they had chosen Dimitri, had decided after hours of wrangling that here was a young man they could both agree on, whose qualifications and test scores had earned him a spot on their team. Dimitri was even now preparing to take on an active role in his first MI-5 operation; Harry supposed that working as a ship's captain wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him, considering he had only recently left the SBS. Ruth liked that about him, Harry recalled, liked that he had a military background, and thus understood things like consequences and the necessity of following orders in a way that many of their Oxbridge candidates would not.

And so Sunday passed, with Harry wondering if perhaps he ought to ring Ruth, just to chat, and yet he resisted the temptation. It would not do, he thought, to push her, to frighten her into thinking that he would now demand every moment of her time, that he would expect her to turn away from her independent life and instead find herself held captive by his desires. He loved her, loved her just as she was, and he was not about to try to change her. It was his intention for them to share their lives, not for him to consume her, and so he left her be, much as he longed for her, and decided that he would wait to speak to her about arranging another quiet dinner on Monday.

* * *

Sunday was a quiet day for Ruth as well; she spent most of it curled up on her sofa with her little cat, blushing when she recalled what she and Harry had done, sitting in that very spot. She had rescued her cat (whose name was Nemo) from a shelter, and he was wary around strangers, and had spent most of Saturday night upstairs, hiding beneath her bed. In her heart she harbored hopes that, as things progressed, Nemo and Harry might meet, and become acquainted with one another, and they might all three of them pass the occasional lazy Saturday cuddled up together.

Without his immediate presence there to overwhelm her, Ruth was able to admit that she had been perhaps a bit foolish in her worries the night before. She _knew_ Harry, knew him better than anyone, and he knew her. He had always treated her gently, and he was still here, still asking her to stand beside him despite all the horror they had faced over the years. Despite the fact that she had left him with his declaration of love lingering unspoken on his lips, and returned to him with a husband and a child. They had never really discussed it, she realized as she scratched Nemo behind the ears and was rewarded with a soft, steady purr; never once, in all the months since her return, had either of them raised the specter of her life in Cyprus, or the tragic way in which it had ended.

She missed Nico still. He was a charming boy, and he had warmed to her at once. Having never really known his own mother, who died when he was small, Nico had been eager to get to know her, to play games and climb up in her lap to read in the evenings. Gentle and kind, he had captured her heart entirely, and she had briefly allowed herself to entertain the thought that perhaps a family wasn't entirely beyond her grasp. But he had been taken from her, as she always feared he might be, and she did not dare reach out to him, did not dare remind him of the violent way his father had died.

George she missed less than Nico, if she were being honest. He was _a good and kind man,_ as she had told Harry, but they shared little in common. Her passion for literature, her insatiable curiosity, her desire to make a change in the world; George had seen each of those traits as endearing, but he did not share them. His was a quiet life, and he liked it that way. For a time, Ruth had liked it that way as well, but if she were being honest she had missed Harry, had missed their lively debates and the warmth of his smile. Any affection she held for George was perfunctory at best, and stemmed more from her fondness for his son and her gratitude at having found a way to settle down and heal her wounds in peace than from any real depth of feeling for the man himself.

Before they were married, Ruth wanted to talk to Harry about all of this. She wanted to talk to him about Nico, and hear his stories about his own children. She wanted to answer the question he'd asked her the day they were reunited, the question she had never truly answered; _do you love him?_

The answer was _no, Harry. I could not love him, not when my heart was in London with you._

Harry needed to hear that, needed to know that while she felt truly, deeply guilty for the role she'd played in ending George's life, she had not ever loved him, and she did not want him to be a stumbling block on her path to finding happiness with Harry.

 _I'll talk to him tomorrow,_ she told herself. _We'll have dinner again, I'll kiss him again, and I'll tell him how much I love him._


	6. Chapter 6

As usual, Harry arrived at Thames House around seven in the morning. There was no particular reason for him to come in to work quite so early, but he had made it his habit long ago. Harry always woke early in the mornings, and he had grown tired of sitting alone in his empty house, reading the paper and contemplating the shattering stillness that surrounded him whenever he was not at work. To combat the demons that lurked in those early morning shadows he threw himself into his job, pouring over files that could have waited another hour or two. He did much the same in the evenings, sitting behind his desk long after everyone else had gone, so that he might avoid their jovial _what are you doing after_ conversations, and so that he might delay his inevitable return to solitude.

He was never alone, inside Thames House. Teams of agents worked round the clock on a plethora of operations, big and small. Even in the middle of the darkest nights there was tea and conversation to be had, with the new technical analysts assigned to the night shift and the unlucky sods who'd drawn overnight surveillance watches and the pleasant security guards who knew him by name, and never questioned his comings and goings.

As he settled himself behind his desk on this particular Monday morning, however, he found himself wondering if perhaps, in a few weeks' time, he might have cause to linger in his own home. If perhaps, after a few more pleasant dinners, a few more intense snogs on the sofa, a bit more careful wooing, there might be a lovely woman lying in his bed, a woman he was loath to leave. The thought of spending long quiet mornings with Ruth, wrapped up together beneath his duvet or smiling at one another across the kitchen table, was a deeply appealing one. Before now he had hardly dared hope that such a thing might ever come to pass, but she had been warm and receptive on Saturday night; she had not blanched from his confession regarding Nicholas Blake and she had welcomed his touch. He was, for once, feeling rather hopeful.

As was her habit, Ruth arrived not long after he did. They had done this dance for many years, before she left in the wake of Cotterdam and across all the long, dismal months since her return. He would leave the blinds on his office windows open, and she would enter the Grid, keeping her head down and her gaze focused on the floor until she reached her station. But then, as she sat behind her desk and stowed her bag away and booted up her computer, she would look up at him, her eyes drawn to his as if by some magnetic force, and she would smile. Today was no different; she did not acknowledge his presence until she was safely sat behind her computer, but when she did, she gave him such a radiant smile that he could not help but return it.

He watched her, interested to see if their routine would alter at all, given what they'd shared together over the weekend. Ordinarily, once she'd seen that everything was as it should be she would rise and make her way to the small kitchenette in the back of the Grid, and fix two cups of tea. She would pour a splash of milk into one, and drop a bit more sugar than was really advisable into the other, and she would carry them both back to his office, where they would sit together and sip their tea and discuss their plans for the day.

This particular part of the dance was relatively new; before Cotterdam, Ruth had only been a Research Officer, one of many analysts on hand, and she had keenly felt the difference in their stations within the hierarchy of the Grid. She never would have dared to take her tea with him, to display such familiarity in full view of all and sundry. Upon her return, Harry had secured a promotion and a healthy pay rise for her, naming her the Senior Intelligence Analyst for the whole of the Section. She was still his subordinate, technically speaking, but something in their personal dynamic had shifted. Of all of the members of their Section, Ruth had the most experience of anyone, including Lucas, who had not served for very long before he was captured by the Russians. The length of her experience combined with the wisdom of her counsel had made her his equal in many ways, and she had seemed to sense this, too, had seemed more willing than ever to stand up to him, to question him, to force him to question himself. She had always possessed that capability, that strength of character, but now she did not hesitate in displaying it.

And this morning, like all the many mornings that had come before it, he watched with a small smile playing across his lips as she rose, and went off to fetch their tea.

* * *

Ruth couldn't seem to keep the smile from her face as she went to make tea for herself and Harry. She did this every morning, and she had no intention of altering her routine, regardless of what had passed between them. If anything, snogging him senseless on her sofa on Saturday night only made her want to sit with him in private all the more. They would have about a half an hour, before the rest of the team arrived, and in that time there were things they needed to discuss, such as plans for the upcoming operation and her weekly threat assessment. There were things she _wanted_ to discuss, like the dinner they'd shared and the possibility of them sharing another in the immediate future, and now seemed as good a time as any to raise those questions.

When she slipped through his office door, two steaming mugs of tea in hand, she found that he had closed the blinds, and was standing, somewhat awkwardly, by his desk, watching her with a faintly bemused sort of expression on his face, the expression of a man who couldn't quite believe his luck.

"Morning," she said, fighting off a fluttering of panic as she remembered the rocky start they had endured over dinner on Saturday night. She did not want to sit through a resurgence of that excruciatingly awkward silence.

"Good morning," he answered, giving her a little smile as he took his tea from her. Before she could say another word he set his tea on the desk, and reached out for her, one hand slipping around her waist, pulling her towards him, his lips descending on hers with a gentle, wonderful kind of hunger. With one hand she clutched her tea and with the other she held the back of his neck, pulling him towards her as her fingers toyed with the soft curls at the nape of his neck.

This was not a good idea, and she knew it. Though it was early, and the blinds were closed, and the only person who dared walk into Harry's office unannounced was Ruth herself, she did not want to become the sort of person who kissed her boss in the office on a Monday morning. She did not want what they shared outside the walls of Thames House to color the work they did, and she did not want to risk anyone seeing them, to risk anyone having cause to mutter about Harry under their breath. _It undermines you and that's not acceptable,_ she'd told him once, and she believed it still.

Luckily for her, Harry pulled away before she was forced to do so herself, and they were both of them left slightly breathless and smiling. He kissed her forehead once, a gentle gesture that seemed somehow even more familiar and intimate than the kiss that came before it. He stepped back, retrieving his tea and going to sit behind his desk; Ruth took this as her cue to sit down as well, and she folded herself into her usual chair across from him.

"I'm sorry," he told her sheepishly. "I know we probably shouldn't get into the habit but…" he shrugged, and she filled in the gaps for him. She had needed that, needed to kiss him, needed to taste him, needed to feel him, and she thought that perhaps he might have needed it, too.

"Just this once, Harry, I think you can be forgiven," she assured him, grinning down at her tea.

* * *

He knew he had embarrassed her, could tell from the rosy blush on her cheeks and the way she was looking down at her tea, instead of at him. She was such a private person, his Ruth, and in the past knowing that their colleagues were gossiping about them had been enough to send her running for the hills. And even knowing this, even knowing what a risk it was, he had not been able to resist the temptation to kiss her as he had longed to do from the moment he left her flat on Saturday evening. _We'll just have to see more of each other outside of work,_ he mused as he sipped his tea, s _o this sort of thing doesn't happen again._

"Just this once?" he asked her, and though he said it in a playful tone of voice, it was a genuine question. Harry wanted to know what Ruth needed in order to be comfortable in their relationship both at work and away from it. He didn't want to risk losing her again because of a thoughtless word or deed; he very much wanted her to be his wife, and he would give her anything she wanted in return. If that meant he could not touch her within the walls of Thames House, he would accept that ultimatum without a fight.

"Well, maybe more than once," she said, and it seemed to Harry that the look on her face could best be described as mischievous. "But we do need to be careful, Harry. You're the boss here. People need to respect you, and they won't if they catch us…"

"Snogging in the corridors?" he suggested lightly when words seemed to fail her.

"Yes," she told him, and he could tell by the set of her mouth that she was trying not to smile. She looked at him that way sometimes, when he was trying to be charming and she was pretending not to be amused. He liked that particular expression. He liked it very much.

"I will endeavor to restrain myself," he told her winsomely.

"Do."

For the next few moments they sipped their tea in a companionable silence. Harry found this sort of silence, a silence occupied by two people rather than just one, to be vastly underrated. It was lovely, and deep, and peaceful, in a way that his life so often _wasn't._ And Ruth understood the need for quiet, as he had told her once long ago. She understood that sometimes words just got in the way, that sometimes all he needed was to be near to her. Sometimes he thought she felt much the same. He certainly hoped that she did.

There was still the matter of the ring to be decided. Originally he'd planned to bring it up over their dinner on Saturday night, but the moment had not come, and for now the ring still sat in its little box, tucked away in the pocket of his coat. He'd been carrying it around for nearly a month now, and the security guards no longer questioned it when he stepped through the scanners at the front door. That might be a bit of a security breach, he supposed, but the romantic in him hoped that those young men had heard the stories, about Sir Harry and his lady love, and that they were quietly rooting for him.

It wasn't important to him that she wear it. As nice as it would be, to see the ring he had purchased sitting on her finger, announcing to all who crossed her path that this woman was spoken for, was loved beyond measure, he was not so militantly traditionalist as to demand such a gesture from Ruth. And he supposed, given her own rather bohemian nature, that Ruth was likely not the sort of woman who would wear an engagement ring without a fuss. But still, it was the thing men did, when they proposed, and so Harry had dutifully purchased a beautiful ring, and he would ask her if she wanted to wear it.

 _Just maybe not now,_ he thought as he regarded her across his desk. They were facing the start of another week of work, the start of another operation, stepping once more into the breach without Ros there beside them, and he supposed that sitting in his office on a Monday morning was not the most romantic setting for such a question. He would save it, he decided, for their next dinner.

Which raised the question, of course, of when they would next have a chance to see one another outside of work.

"What do our schedules look like for the week?" he asked her as he leaned back in his chair, discretely stretching his back and wrapping his hands around his mug of tea. Across the desk Ruth's eyes rolled heavenward and a little furrow appeared between her brows as she mentally scrolled through their calendars for the coming days.

"Today we have a staff meeting, and Dimitri will be conferencing in from Morocco. Lucas flies out on Wednesday, and then the boat departs on Friday. We'll be here all weekend, keeping an eye on the situation with Abib."

"And I have a meeting with the Home Sec on Thursday afternoon," Harry supplied helpfully.

"Right," Ruth nodded, her eyelashes fluttering as she added this information to her own internal notes. "We've got some low grade surveillance running on a mosque in Birmingham, we've received word that two AQ operatives on the no-fly list will be attempting to come in via the Eurostar later in the week, and we've got a team preparing to deploy to Wales to monitor an extremist environmental group."

"So a light week, then?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

Ruth shrugged, her smile slipping away as the reality of their work slowly crept in on her. Harry saw it, saw the moment when the happiness his kiss had brought her began to fade beneath the weight of their responsibilities, and he wanted to kick himself for bringing it up in the first place.

"I was thinking," he said slowly, "perhaps we could have dinner together again. Maybe tonight or tomorrow, before we get too caught up in the Abib operation."

"Um," as she contemplated her answer she bit her lip in a way that made her look so much younger, so much lighter than she ordinarily did. Sometimes that worried him, the difference in their ages, but he knew in his heart that it didn't matter. Their experiences had shaped them, and Ruth had been to too many funerals for a woman who'd not yet turned forty. They were equals in grief, if not in age. "It will have to be tonight, I'm afraid," she continued. "I've got my choir on Tuesday nights."

Somehow he'd forgotten about that, forgotten that Ruth, unlike the rest of them, had found a way to connect with other people, normal people. She sang in a choir, though Harry was rather ashamed to admit that he had never heard her sing before. He made a promise to himself then and there to rectify that at the first possible opportunity.

"I think tonight would be just fine, don't you?" he asked.

And for once, Ruth did not look away. He felt the temperature rising between them as she looked at him, as he wondered if perhaps their next dinner might end in much the same way as the first, as he wondered if the same thought had crossed her mind.

"Tonight would be perfect, Harry," she said.


	7. Chapter 7

The day had not gone smoothly, but then again, their days so rarely did. Ruth had spent most of the afternoon buried beneath a mountain of translations, stepping in as the usual Mandarin translator had called out with the flu. The Abib operation had very nearly ended before it began, as Dimitri explained the difficulties he was having in wrangling the unruly ship's crew. The Home Secretary had called, once again with very little pressing business to discuss but an apparently endless desire for idle chatter that set Harry's teeth on edge. He got the feeling that this new Home Secretary, a man called William Towers, was simply trying to get a feel for Harry's personality, and he felt that such calls were an egregious waste of time, as they would be working together quite closely for the foreseeable future, and Harry supposed that Towers would learn all he cared to about Harry and his habits in the coming days without the aid of these lengthy, baseless conversations.

Still, though, he had dinner with Ruth to look forward to, and as six o'clock approached, he decided enough was enough. He rose from his desk, and made his way out onto the Grid to speak to her. As he walked he took the time to examine the space around him, to absorb the grim reality of the two empty stations that had once belonged to Jo and Ros. They had found one replacement agent, but they were in dire need of a second. It had taken them months to bring Dimitri on board, and the powers that be were hesitant to allow them the funds necessary to pay for yet another team member. Harry dearly hoped he could make them see sense before his understaffed team found themselves embroiled in any sort of serious trouble.

Lucas was dutifully working away at his station, compiling all the information Ruth had given him on Abib and putting together a strategy for his upcoming operation. Tariq was back in the forgery suite, disbursing kit and a series of helpful instructions to a small team preparing to head out into the field for the evening. And Ruth herself was still sat behind her desk, a pile of paperwork in front of her and the end of her pen caught between her teeth.

"Ruth," he spoke her name quietly as he approached her, hoping not to startle her. It worked; for her part Ruth did not appear particularly surprised, that he had sought her out. She simply smiled, just a little, and kept her gaze focused squarely on her work.

"Everything all right, Harry?" she asked in a voice that did not carry past his ears. There was nothing untoward, in his coming to speak to her at the end of a long day. It happened all the time, these quiet moments between them, but he could not help but feel as if something were different tonight. Tonight, he felt as if the eyes of everyone bustling around the Grid had fallen upon his back; he supposed that this was a bit dramatic, and that his staff were taking no more notice of his comings and goings than they ordinarily would have done, but he was keenly aware of Ruth's desire for privacy, and he dearly wished not to muck up their dinner before they'd even left the building.

"I was wondering if you'd come to a good stopping point," he told her, mirroring her quiet tone.

Ruth leaned back in her chair, rubbing one hand across the back of her neck, drawing his attention to the pale smoothness of her skin, and giving rise to his desire to lean in and brush his lips across it. For years he had harbored this longing for her, this yearning to feel the warmth of her, pressed in close against him, but until their dinner on Saturday night he had never truly had the chance to experience firsthand just how wonderful they could be together. She had kissed him once, long ago, a sweet, sorrowful kiss, a kiss born of desperation, and the memory of it had haunted him ever since. Now, though, now he knew what it felt like to kiss her out of sheer radiant joy, rather than the heartache of impending separation, and the time she'd spent in his arms had only increased his desire for her, had broken loose his self-restraint and left him aching for more of her. It was in his mind to think that she felt much the same, given the way she had reacted when he kissed her earlier in the day, the way she had held him close, had opened herself to him despite her own reservations about engaging in such displays in the office. This newfound understanding they shared was delicate, and he knew that she needed him to tread lightly, to not ask too much of her too soon. And so he did not lean in, did not invade her space, did not demand anything more than what she had already offered him.

"I think so, yes. This will keep," she told him. She was not smiling, exactly, but then again she did not smile often, or at least not often enough for his liking. There was a warmth radiating from her eyes, though, a softness that had been lacking in her since her return from Cyprus. And he thought that perhaps it was hope that made her respond to him so gently, perhaps it was this idea that they could make a life together that had changed her attitude, and brought back to her the sparkle of the girl he had known before Mace and his cronies had shattered all their dreams.

"There's just one thing I need to tell you, before we leave." Harry was not looking forward to this particular part of their conversation, but he wanted to discuss it now, before it became an issue. "As you're aware, given my status and the various attempts on my life that have been made in recent years, I've been assigned a security officer."

Ruth nodded in understanding, though her brow furrowed slightly as she no doubt wondered where he was going with this. Harry plowed on, knowing that it was necessary, wishing that it wasn't. "Ordinarily, I don't drive myself. I was able to ditch my officer on Saturday night, but I'm afraid we won't be quite so lucky today."

"What you're trying to tell me is that we'll have a driver this evening." As ever, Ruth was quick on the uptake, and impatient to get to the point.

Harry nodded, somewhat glumly. A loose-lipped security officer had been their downfall, once before, and though he quite liked the gentleman who had taken over for that unlucky sod in the wake of the termination of his employment, he couldn't help but worry that this particular detail might once more spell disaster for the pair of them.

As Harry worried, Ruth leaned towards him across her desk and, after a quick, furtive glance around the Grid, she reached out and covered his hand with her own.

"You asked me to marry you, Harry," she said, her voice now hardly more than a whisper. "I imagine your security officer and I will be seeing a lot of each other, in the future. I'm well aware of the…situation, and honestly, I don't mind."

Harry breathed a deep sigh of relief, and turned his hand over so that he might entwine his fingers with her own. He realized now that it was foolish of him, to think that Ruth had not already considered every possible consequence of their engagement. Of course she had; she was Ruth.

"What's his name?" she asked, giving him a little squeeze before releasing his hand and quickly clasping both of hers together in her lap. There was a faint blush coloring her cheeks, as if she couldn't quite believe what they'd just done, but Harry felt a rather distinct sense of triumph. It pleased him no end, to know that Ruth was willing to endure a bit of mild discomfort in the name of moving things forward between them.

"Mike. Charming fellow, you'll like him."

"I'm sure I will," she told him, smiling.

* * *

It seemed to Ruth that Harry was right, and Mike was a rather nice young man. He did not raise an eyebrow, when she climbed into the back of the car beside Harry, nor did he comment when they stopped off to pick up a Chinese takeaway before continuing on to Harry's, together. He confirmed with Harry that he would be back early in the morning to drive him to Thames House, and bid them both _good evening_ without the slightest trace of smugness or hint of innuendo. There was no guarantee that he would not be sharing this particular information around the water cooler come the morning, but Ruth got the sense that perhaps he was aware of the fate that had befallen his predecessor, and that this knowledge had inspired a certain amount of self-restraint in him.

They made their way into Harry's home, stopping just inside the door so that they might both remove their shoes, and Harry might take a moment to fuss over his little dog. Though a bit plump and getting on in years Scarlet greeted Harry with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, and trotted along obediently as he led her out into the garden. It warmed Ruth's heart, to see the gentle way he treated the little dog; he was so _different_ , away from work, where he could simply be himself, and not the hardnosed spook.

Once Scarlet had been dealt with and their food had been plated up they sat together at his table, once more facing the prospect of sharing a meal, and having to come up with a topic of conversation.

"So how was your day, Ruth?" Harry asked her, smiling over a plate of noodles and rice and vegetables. This playful, teasing Harry was more like the one she remembered of old, the one who did not hesitate to share his dry wit at the office, the one who had preformed a rather charming Charlie Chaplin impersonation in the midst of asking her out to dinner. Ruth had missed that Harry, more than words could say.

"Oh, much the same as yours, I'd imagine," she told him. "Long, and frustrating. We're going to have to find another officer, Harry. We can't run a team with only two agents."

This had been bothering her for several days now, though she had not known quite how to raise the issue. Harry and Ros had drawn close during Ruth's exile, a fact that had quite astonished her upon her return. Before Ruth left, Ros had been patronizing and dismissive, clearly viewing her transfer from Six to Five as a bit of a step down in life. Harry had no tolerance for people who bucked his authority or downplayed the importance of their work, and so it was that Ruth was surprised to see just how well they worked together now. For her part Ruth had never truly forgiven Ros, for calling Mace all those years before and denying them all the chance to sort out the Cotterdam fiasco before it blew up in their faces. Though she had originally intended to give Ros a second chance, on Ruth's first day back on the Grid Ros had been the one to pull the trigger, the one to end Jo's life, and though Ruth knew it was necessary, knew that Ros had no other choice, it was the nail in the coffin of any potential friendship they might have built. They were just too different, Ruth and Ros, and so while they worked together quite well, there had been very little warmth between them.

Harry, though, Harry had trusted Ros, had depended on her, and had in many ways come to view her as a friend. Knowing this, Ruth had been loath to discuss replacing the woman so soon after her death. Time was passing, though, and they had an empty station to fill.

"I agree," Harry said softly, his smile fading. "Once we get the Abib operation put to bed, I think it will be time for you and I to start looking through the personnel files again."

Ordinarily this was a task that Harry might have regulated to his Section Chief, but that job remained empty as he had been hesitant to assign that post to Lucas, and Ruth had been hesitant to ask him why. She knew the details, knew how Lucas had been taken, how Harry had blamed himself, how he had lamented the fact that it took him eight bloody years to bring the man home. And though she could understand Harry's uncertainty to a certain extent, could understand why he might have doubted the man's loyalty in the immediate aftermath of his homecoming, it seemed to her that Lucas had served well and faithfully in the more than two years he'd been back on the team. She couldn't help feeling as if there were another piece of information she was missing, and she was frightened of what it might be.

"I think I had enough of talking about work at the office," Harry told her as they continued to eat their meal. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you."

"Oh?" Those words never failed to inspire a certain amount of trepidation in Ruth. The last time Harry had needed to ask her a question he had proposed, and she was equal parts curious and terrified about what his next grand request might be.

As she watched he reached into his trouser pocket, and produced a small, black velvet-covered box. Her breath caught in her throat; Ruth was fairly certain she knew what that box contained.

"I did ask you to marry me, Ruth, and I meant it. I want us to move forward, together. And I want to do it properly."

Ruth bit her lip, watching as Harry opened the box and set it on the table between them. Nestled inside the box was a silver ring, set with a single diamond, large but not in an ostentatious sort of way. Delicate scrollwork held the stone in place, and as Ruth stared at it, her mind whirring, she couldn't help but think that it was precisely the sort of thing she would have picked for herself. It was intricate, but understated, in keeping with her current tastes in jewelry. When they first met, she had favored larger, more eye-catching pieces, but her style had changed, and it nearly brought tears to her eyes, to think that Harry had noticed, and chosen this ring accordingly.

It had not occurred to her before now that Harry might have purchased a ring. His proposal, such as it had been, had seemed to her to be very spur of the moment, but this ring was a thoughtful gift, a purposeful gift, one which spoke eloquently of his vision of their future together. As far as Ruth was concerned, engagement rings were a perfectly lovely tradition on their own, but this one seemed to bring with it a whole new level of significance she had not previously considered. If Ruth wore that ring, people they worked with were bound to notice, and they were bound to ask about it. Bound to ask her who the lucky bloke was. And when they did, what would she tell them?

She found herself faced with a dilemma, as the ring itself became a symbol for something much greater than their impending marriage. She could wear it, and wear it proudly, and tell anyone who asked that she was marrying Harry Pearce and she was quite happy about it, thank you very much. Or she could tell him no, could say that she would marry him happily but she was not yet prepared for them to tell the people closest to them, the people they saw every day, the people they had sworn to protect with their lives. And she worried what effect such a response would have, worried that it would hurt Harry, not because she'd chosen not to wear his ring, but because she was still too frightened of speculation to let their relationship become public knowledge. Ruth was not ashamed him, was not ashamed of what they had become, what they _would_ become, and she did not want to do anything that would give Harry cause to think she was.

And it was a very pretty ring.

"You don't have to wear it," Harry continued in that same soft, slightly hesitant tone of voice. "I just wanted you to have it, to know that-"

"I would love to wear it," she cut him off, reaching out to cover his hand with hers once again. "The ring is beautiful, Harry, and I meant it, too. When I said yes."

He gave her a brilliant smile, a genuine smile, the sort of smile that she saw too rarely from him, and Ruth was reminded of the promise she'd made to herself, the promise to follow her impulses, and not hold herself back from him any longer. She rose from her chair and rounded the corner of the table, and before he could speak a word she bent and kissed him, full on the lips. She cradled his cheek in her hand, and felt him smile as he kissed her back, as he slipped to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, his tongue invading her mouth even as his hands came to rest, one on her hip and one on the small of her back, pulling her into him.

There was a small part of her that was frightened. A part of her that knew that things would be different tomorrow when they walked onto the Grid. A part of her that worried how her professional life might change, once her personal circumstances became public knowledge. But this part of her was silenced by the sheer bliss of kissing Harry, of holding him, of knowing that she had made him happy, and finally admitting that he had made her rather happy, too.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: This chapter is rated M, for shenanigans. There is trouble just around the corner for our favorite spooks, but for now, we'll let them enjoy themselves…**

* * *

It seemed to Harry that, for once, things were going _exactly_ according to plan. He had offered Ruth the ring, and though she had deliberated for a moment, she had accepted it, had smiled at him warmly and risen from her chair to come to him, of her own choosing, to offer him the warmth of her kiss. As far as he was concerned, this was the best possible result he could have hoped for, and he held her that much closer, drunk on the taste of her. Sometimes he forgot just how small she was, but in moments like this, when he enveloped her within the circle of his arms, when he felt her straining to reach him, pulling him down towards her, he was starkly reminded of just how delicate, just how precious she was to him. He wasn't sure exactly how much liberty he could be permitted to take, just now, when they'd only kissed a bare handful of times and he'd yet to feel the warmth of her naked skin pressed against his own, but he decided that this moment was as good as any to press his luck.

Ever so slowly he dragged his hands down the slope of her back, and he felt her curving into him in response, every inch of her body pressed against him. With a boldness that shocked even him he allowed his hands to continue on their journey, brushing over the swell of her ass, cupping her, holding her there, angling her hips just enough so that she could feel his body's response to her. And for his boldness he was rewarded with a gentle gasp, slipping past her lips and through his own, a sharp intake of breath, but never a hesitation in the way she held him, the way she kissed him.

Encouraged by her positive response to him so far, he guided her back until they collided with the kitchen counter, a solid surface for them to ground themselves upon as their kiss continued, as he lost himself inside her. He had always known, somewhere deep in his heart, that should she should ever find her way to him, Ruth would be like this. Would be passionate, would be magnificent in her abandon. And she was; the little sounds she made, when he thrust his tongue against hers, when he traced the swell of her ass and gave it a little squeeze, set him on fire with need of her. And for her part, Ruth gave as good as she got, dragging her nails down his back over his shirt, her hips softly swaying beneath his own, a tantalizing rhythm that seemed to him to be almost a challenge of sorts.

It was a challenge he was more than willing to accept.

Keeping one hand firmly clenched around the softness of her ass, holding her tight against him, he used the other to gently lift her blouse, sliding his fingertips against the smooth softness of her back. And as he did he tore his mouth from hers, heard the breathy little whimper that escaped her when he dragged his lips down the column of her throat, following the path he had mapped out earlier while they spoke quietly to one another on the Grid. It would not do, he knew, to leave a mark on her, at least not where other people could see, and so he only kissed her gently, despite the primal desire he felt to claim her, to devour her whole. His wayward hand continued its journey across her skin, feeling the goose bumps his touch inspired, feeling the way she shivered and gasped beneath him. Her hands had stilled, one fisted in the back of his shirt, one cradling his head against her body, and the more he tasted her, the more he craved her.

"I want you," he murmured, his lips brushing her collarbone as he spoke.

"Then take me, Harry," she breathed in reply. Her hands finally moved, dancing across his spine, pushing him that much more firmly against her, so that there could be no doubt that she could feel his arousal, hot and hard and throbbing, caught between their hips.

* * *

Ruth had spent rather a lot of time, over the last few days, thinking about what it might be like to find herself in Harry's bed. In truth, she'd been having such thoughts for _years_ , but until his rather unexpected proposal, she'd all but given up hope of ever finding out for herself what it might be like to drown beneath the weight of his regard for her. She had engaged in fanciful daydreams, wondering what he looked like beneath his Saville Row suits, what he might feel like, moving deep inside her. She had thought about his pride, about the warmth of his gaze, about the depth of his passion, and she had trembled, to think what it might be like to give herself over to him completely.

Now, though, now she knew.

She knew that when she'd kissed him, standing there in his kitchen, something deep inside her had burst into flames, a damning, swirling vortex of heat and need and desperate love. Always in the past she had moved slowly, when it came to giving her body to another, to opening herself up to that kind of irrevocable intimacy. It changed things between people, and she knew it; she had been with men who never looked at her the same way, once they'd seen her naked, and that sly, knowing look had always terrified her in a way. Terrified her to think that someone else might presume to know the secrets of her heart, to risk that they might use that knowledge to manipulate her to their own ends. It was much easier to hide, than to lay herself out bare before another person.

And true, she and Harry hadn't been together in the traditional sense – or any sense – for more than a few days, but he had taken up residence inside her heart long ago. She could think of nothing more personal than the way he looked at her already, with the eyes of a man who knew her soul, if not her body. She had agreed to marry him, to bind her life to his, and she had his ring on her finger to prove it. What purpose would it serve, then, to delay the inevitable? Tonight her heart was singing, and she had no desire to leave him, to save their coming together for another day. He had whispered the words _I want you,_ and she had nearly laughed aloud, thinking how badly _she_ wanted _him,_ thinking how lucky they were that, for once, they were on exactly the same page.

So when he pulled himself away from her, snaked one arm around her hips, and led her towards the stairs, she followed him in a state of excited jubilation.

His home was warm and quiet, and the soft carpet on the stairs muffled the sounds of their footfalls. And Ruth herself was warm and quiet, safe and whole and happy, tucked up beneath his arm. For so long she had dreamt of this, had waited for this, had wept to think that this was beyond her reach, and she did not have it in her, to doubt him now. She would follow where he led, would allow her heart and her hands to silence the frantic machinations of her mind, and what would be, would be.

When they reached his room he turned her gently, his hands on her hips, his face looming above her, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crinkled with the warmth of his gaze.

"I've wanted you here, Ruth, you've no idea how long," he murmured.

"I think I do," she answered, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck, using it as leverage to pull him down to her even as she stretched up on her tiptoes, desperate to meet his lips with her own. And he was with her in an instant, his tongue heavy and certain as he searched her out, his fingertips digging into her hips, clutching her fiercely. _Let him bruise me,_ she thought, _let him cut me, let him break me, for I am his, and always have been. God help me._

Perhaps he sensed her urgency, or perhaps not; either way, he would not be rushed. Though she ground her hips forward, her heart racing as she felt him hard and ready where their bodies met, though she sucked his bottom lip between her teeth and pulled him ever nearer to her, though her hands rucked up the back of his shirt and traced teasing patterns against the skin of his back, Harry did not falter, or speed up his movements to match her pace. He only held her, only kissed her, and she broke against him like a wave upon the shore, as he held steady and firm, and demanded that she linger in this moment with him, rather than rushing straight to the next and the next.

Frustration rose like bile in the back of her throat but before she could protest he was moving, his hands gently catching the hem of her blouse, lifting it up and up until she was forced to raise her arms above her head, so that he might dispense with it. And the moment her blouse touched the floor his lips were on her skin once more, tracing the swell of her breast where it met the lace of her bra, drawing a long, satisfied sigh from her lips. _That's more like it,_ she thought, smiling. With one hand pressed firmly against the small of her back he directed her, her body arching beneath his touch, pressing the softness of her skin ever nearer to his searching mouth. Ruth sighed and trembled and melted in his arms, running the tips of her fingers through his sparse hair, reveling in the moment as he had wordlessly asked her to. Reveled in the heady knowledge that this was Harry Pearce whose lips so gently kissed her breasts, whose hand was even now searching for the zip of her skirt, eager to bare her to him fully.

And then he found it, and the fabric was sliding down her hips, and her breath caught in her throat as she stood before him in nothing but her underwear. Ruth caught her bottom lip between her teeth, watching him with just a trace of uncertainty. The last person to see her naked was George, and before him it had been years since last she'd been with anyone. Had Harry devoted as much time to thinking about her as she had to thinking about him? Was she anything like what he'd dreamed?

She never got the chance to ask him; with eager hands he pulled her to him once again, and once again his lips descended on hers as, sure of his purpose, he led her back to the bed behind him. His kiss answered her every question, erased her every doubt; he kissed like he was drowning, and she was his only chance for survival, and for her part Ruth was left breathless and reckless and yearning for him. When her legs collided with the bed she pulled him down with her, turning as they went so that when they collapsed together they were sprawled on their sides, one of her legs moving immediately to hook around his hip and draw him to her. And though he still wore his trousers she could feel him, hard and straining for her, and she ground her tender heat down against him, shocked by the strength of her own reaction to him.

With some fumbling and a bout of giggling she managed to snake her hands between them, and she attacked his shirt buttons with a will, hampered somewhat by his own attempts to relieve her of her bra. They completed their tasks at almost the same moment; Ruth yanked his shirt from his body and Harry threw her bra across the room, and he used his significant size advantage to roll her beneath him as his mouth descended on one of her nipples and her world went black as the sensation of his lips and his teeth and his tongue drove every thought from her mind. In response to his urging she bent her knees, cradling him there between her thighs, and mapped the topography of his back with her fingertips while every doubt and every bitter word they'd ever spoken to one another faded away entirely.

* * *

She was driving him mad, and she knew it. She _had_ to know it, had to know that the way she rocked her hips beneath him, the way she whimpered when he sank his teeth into the soft flesh of her breast, the way she dragged her nails down his back, all of it combined into a heady cocktail of love and lust and need, and Harry found his self-control slipping, his desire to make this last slowly losing out to his desire to bury himself inside her.

While his mouth was busy learning the shape of her breasts, learning where to kiss her and how to draw that low keening sound from deep in the back of her throat, her hands had once more slipped between them, this time intent on his belt buckle. Harry lifted his hips, though he found himself unwilling to part from her completely, and so they struggled together, she determined to divest him of his trousers and he determined to kiss and lick and suck every inch of her he could reach. Eventually though he was forced to roll away from her, in order to dispense with his trousers; Ruth pounced on him the moment he was on his back, and with a charming, hesitant little smile she reached between them, and caught the waistband of his trousers in her hands, and gently tugged them away from him. When her task was done he sat up and pulled her towards him, kissing her tenderly, softly, wanting her to know how much he loved her, how grateful he was to her, how happy she made him.

Once more, she was straddling his lap, though this time they had only the barrier of their underwear to separate them, and the moment was all the sweeter for it, for the knowledge of how far they had come, and how far they still had left to go. Kisses would not sate him indefinitely, though, and he was eager to feel her, all of her, to know her as he never had before, to hear the sound of her gasping his name in ragged, wretched ecstasy, and with this in mind he once more turned them, once more rolled her beneath him.

To his mind she was staggeringly beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever known, not due to the fineness of her features but owing to their uniqueness, to the way the heavy lines around her mouth, the sharp hollows of her cheekbones, the burning brilliance of her eyes all coalesced into a single image, a singular glory. She was Ruth, and there was nothing more lovely, more desirable, more shattering in all his world than Ruth.

With an unsteady intake of breath he held her, ran the pads of his fingers from her collarbones over the rise of her breasts, across her soft belly, feeling her trembling beneath him, until he reached the final barrier of black lace that separated her from him. She breathed his name and canted her hips up towards him, giving him all the permission he needed to bare her to him fully for the first time. And when it was done he stopped, stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped thinking, very nearly ceased to exist altogether because this was _Ruth,_ and not only was she naked and writhing in his bed, but her folds were warm and wet and hairless, the shape and characteristic of her sex bare and provocative and begging him to taste her.

" _Christ_ , Ruth," he swore, unable to resist the temptation, unable to deny the siren song of her body, calling him ever onward. Tomorrow he might ask her, when she'd done it, why, if it had been for him, but now he was quite overcome with need of her, and before she could speak a word he shuffled down the bed and allowed his tongue to follow the path his fingertips had traced against her heat.

And as he did she came to life beneath him, her fingers fisting in his sheets, her moans only growing in intensity as he learned what she liked, what she didn't, what she needed to ascend to the height of pleasure, to shatter around him. The unhindered view of her folds allowed him now to find the small nub of her clit rather quickly, and he wrapped his lips around it even as he thrust two thick fingers inside her, curling, searching, demanding all she had to give, and she gave it without hesitation, bucking up hard against his face, swearing and writhing beneath him until at last it became too much and she came with a wail, the force of her orgasm slamming her back against his pillows, as her warm, wet inner muscles clenched and unclenched around his fingers and his mouth followed the shape of her, drinking her in, leading her though the aftershocks that left her whimpering and begging for him.

"Harry, please," she moaned, and who was he to deny her?

There would be other nights, nights when this thing between them was less raw, less all-consuming in its intensity, when he could take her anyway he chose. Tonight he did not have it in him to wait to rearrange them, to ask her for more; he slid up her body until his lips collided with hers. As he kissed her she reached between him and slipped his trunks down over his hips, using her toes to complete the job and toss them away. There, nestled in the warm, wet valley between her thighs, he found peace.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he breached her, mindful of his own not inconsiderable size, mindful of the fact that it had likely been as long for her as it had been for him, and the way she gasped when the head of his erection slipped into her welcoming warmth told him he was right to take it slowly. For his sake, as well; it was unbelievable, to think that they had made it this far, that she was wearing his ring on her finger, that his lips had left the bruise that marked the curve of her breast just above her heart, that one day soon she would be his wife. It was all he'd wanted for years now, and the sheer bliss of having it, of having _her_ , was almost more than he could bear. Harry Pearce was not generally a happy man, and this happiness was so foreign to him that had he been in possession of all his faculties he might well have taken a moment to worry what horror loomed on the horizon.

As it was, though, there was no time left for worry when Ruth was gasping his name, when she cradled his hips in the valley of her thighs and urged him ever onward. He responded to her urging with enthusiasm, gradually thrusting deeper and deeper within her, until he felt the sharp sting of her nails digging into his back, until he felt her clench around him, until all sense of time and reason left him and all he knew was her, the scent of her, the feel of her, the sound of her as she came with him buried to the hilt inside her. With a long, satisfied groan what remained of his self-control left him and he emptied himself inside her, and she held him all the while, trembling and whimpering and wrapped around him.


	9. Chapter 9

"Lady Pearce," Harry murmured as the tips of his fingers danced slowly up and down the length of Ruth's spine.

Beneath him she hummed in response, her head lying on her folded arms, her eyes closed and a beatific smile painting her features. The sun had not yet risen, but they were both of them caught in that blissful state between sleep and the start of a new day, when everything was warm and soft and quiet and full of promise.

"You'll be Lady Pearce, once we're married," he explained. The thought had come to him as he watched her stirring beside him, watched the play of the delicate muscles along the length of her back, watched the fluttering of her eyelashes and listened to the soft, sleepy noises she made as she left the land of dreams behind. He was watching her, and considering the sheer improbability of their impending marriage, considering the sheer bliss that filled him at the very thought. And as he watched her he recalled the words that Connie James had spoken to him, the way she'd needled him about there not being a Lady Pearce, the way she'd told him, however obliquely, that she had learned of Ruth's plight. Now Connie was gone and Ruth was here, and there was to be a Lady Pearce after all.

As he spoke her lips turned down in the ghost of a frown, and she opened her eyes at last, and he drowned in her once again, paralyzed by the beauty and the brilliance of her gaze.

"And if I keep my name?" she asked. There was no hardness to her voice, no anger; she was genuinely curious. "Would I be Lady Evershed?"

Unable and unwilling to resist her, Harry leaned forward and kissed her softly. "I honestly have no idea," he replied, smiling.

"I wonder who I could ask," she murmured, her eyes closing again as she began to drift away from him. Nothing would have made him happier than to watch her fall back into sleep, than to hold her for all the long hours of the morning, safe and content. It was Tuesday, though, and there was work to be getting on with; Mike would come to fetch him soon, and the stillness that he so treasured would shatter beneath the chaos of his life. For the first time in a very long time, Harry found himself wondering if he might not be better off far away from MI-5, if perhaps the time had come for him to finally close this chapter of his life. He wasn't a young man, any more, and theirs was a dangerous profession; he wanted nothing more than to spend all the rest of his days wrapped up in Ruth, but he feared that if he stayed with MI-5, those days would be numbered. Perhaps it would best for him to leave now, leave when things were going well, when he could be confident that he had done some good in the world, and fade into a peaceful retirement. He resolved to discuss it with Ruth later, some time when they were both of them wide awake and prepared to give adequate consideration to the possible consequences.

"We'll need to leave soon," he told her gently, leaning forward to brush his lips across her temple, the rise of her cheekbone, the dimple that formed at the corner of her mouth when she smiled.

"Five more minutes," she grumbled good-naturedly, burrowing deeper into the pillows.

"Why don't we have a shower?" he suggested, gently pulling the duvet away from her body, exposing her once more to his hungry gaze. Though he knew that there was no time, that they needed to shower and dress and have breakfast in short order so that they might both of them be awake and decent when Mike arrived, he nonetheless found himself struggling with the temptation to take her there and then, as she lay on her stomach beneath him; her legs were splayed out wantonly beside his own, and he could not stop himself from reaching over, from tracing the curve of her bottom all the way down the warm, damp cleft between her legs. She sighed in bliss, as his fingertips once more ran across her smooth folds, raising her hips slightly to allow him better access. It would be the easiest thing in the world, he knew, to sink himself inside her, to lose himself in the joy and the rapture and the heat of her, but now was not the time. _Later_ , he promised himself, thinking that perhaps tomorrow he might be able to take her home with him again, might be able to fall asleep sated and warm with her in his bed.

"Up you get," he murmured, kissing her once between the shoulder blades before he pulled himself away from her. Though she pouted and grumbled and took her time about it, she did eventually follow him into the bathroom, and he was all the happier for it, for her presence beside him in his home, where she belonged.

* * *

There was a surreal quality to the domestic morning Ruth shared with Harry; they showered together, touching and teasing and shuffling about, laughing as they nudged one another with their elbows and fought to be the first to stand beneath the warm spray. And after that they continued their delicate dance, brushing teeth and hair and smiling at one another in the bathroom mirror. Once they were dressed and pressed ready to face the world, Harry as pristine as ever in his suit and Ruth blushing slightly, still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, they made their way downstairs for breakfast. They ate and drank their tea and still they smiled, content to be together.

Long ago, when Ruth had first admitted to herself the depth of her feelings for this man, she had worried that perhaps they would not easily fit within one another's lives. They had both of them been on their own for so very long, had become stubborn and obstinate and set in their ways. She had worried that he would find her dull, or conversely that he would find her too troublesome, that eventually her little quirks which had seemed so endearing in the beginning would become grating, and he would tire of her. It was far too soon to tell if those worries were entirely baseless, but as they sat together at his kitchen table he had seemed as happy as she, and she told herself not to fret needlessly. They knew one another, had spent years together and years apart and yet somehow their affections remained unchanged, and she told herself to have faith. To have hope.

Mike arrived around seven, and said only _good morning_ as they clambered into the back of the car together. The young man seemed completely unfazed by her presence, and Ruth wondered rather suddenly if this was the first time he had ever come to Harry's door to find him still in the company of a woman. The thought was unsettling, but she dismissed it quickly, reminding herself of all the early mornings and late nights she and Harry had spent on the Grid together; he'd never had the time to keep a paramour, she knew. He'd been too busy spending time with her.

Harry gave Mike her address, so that they might stop off at her home on their way in, and she might have the opportunity to change her clothes. Ruth had put her foot down on that point; there was no way she was going to arrive in the same outfit as yesterday, and Harry had argued there was no sense in her making her way home alone when he had a perfectly good driver at his disposal. As they sat together in the backseat of the car Harry reached across and took her hand, lacing his fingers together with her own and brining them to rest against his thigh.

"Are you nervous?" he asked her softly. There was no need for him to expand upon the question; his thumb was absently running back and forth across the ring that decorated the third finger of her left hand.

Ruth smiled and gave his hand a little squeeze. _Yes_ , she was nervous. For the first time, they were planning to arrive on the Grid together, with his ring on her hand. Though she had endured years of gossip regarding the state of her relationship with Harry, both before her exile and in the wake of her return, no one had ever openly discussed it with her, save for one brief conversation with Malcolm. She didn't know what she'd say, should anyone question her, and just thinking about it made her almost sick to her stomach. As a rule, she had never been the sort to discuss her private life, and the details of that private life had never been quite as salacious as they were now. But she loved Harry, and she had just spent the night in his bed, and after everything they'd been through, the heartbreak and the bloodshed and the years of separation, she was no longer willing to allow her own natural reticence to stand in the way of her personal happiness.

"A bit," she confessed. "But I'm not having second thoughts," she told him firmly.

"That's good," Harry said, and with a smile he raised her hand to his lips, and planted a gentle kiss there.

* * *

 _Here we go,_ Harry thought. The morning had gone better than he'd ever hoped; there was something so _right_ about having Ruth in his home, sharing his space and his time with her. They had not discussed work once so far, save for a brief conversation regarding Ruth's lingering nerves; it seemed to him that perhaps it would be best for them both if they left such matters at the office as much as they could. He was not so much a fool as to hope that they would never discuss their professional lives at home, but he did intend to limit those conversations wherever possible. At home, he very much wanted them to be just Harry and Ruth, not Section Head and Senior Analyst, and Ruth seemed to share his feelings on the matter.

They disembarked from the car and bid Mike _good morning,_ and made their way into Thames House. Though it was in his mind to reach out and take Ruth's hand in his own he resisted, thinking that perhaps that would be pushing too far. Just walking in together was momentous enough in its own way, and he did not want to press for more, not when things were going so well, when he was feeling so certain of his standing with her. The security guards greeted them both perfunctorily, and before he knew it they had stepped through the doors, and reentered their working lives. Though they had arrived rather later than he was accustomed to the Grid was not particularly crowded, and no one paid them any mind as they set about their day. He went to his office, and Ruth went to her desk, and after a few moments she returned with two cups of tea in hand.

 _This can work,_ he told himself, smiling at her over his mug as they discussed the schedule for the day. There were meetings to attend and an op to prepare for and politicians to appease, same as every day, and Ruth was with him, same as every day. The only difference he could see was the way she smiled at him softly, the way her eyes seemed to shine, the way his own heart felt all the lighter for the steps they had taken towards one another.

He had not told her yet that he loved her, though he supposed the time for that was fast approaching. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but then, he had felt that way for years. Perhaps it was unusual, to propose to a woman without ever having made such a declaration, but then he and Ruth were unusual people. They knew all too well the consequences of hesitation, the fleeting nature of life, and they both knew that when opportunity presents itself it must be taken, however extraordinary the circumstances. _Tomorrow night,_ he told himself. _I will tell her tomorrow._

"What are you smiling at?" Ruth asked him gently as she prepared herself to leave his office and face her day.

"Have dinner with me tomorrow," he answered.

She blushed and ducked her head; it seemed to him that the time for shyness was long gone, but this bashfulness was part of Ruth's charm. She wouldn't be his Ruth without it.

"I'd love to, Harry," she told him warmly.

* * *

The entire bloody day passed without anyone asking Ruth about her ring, and though she was hesitant to talk about it, she was perturbed by the shocking lack of observational skills displayed by her coworkers. _This is what comes of working with men,_ she told herself wryly. If Sam Buxton or Zoe Reynolds or even Jo Portman had been on the Grid she was certain that she would have been bombarded by questions the moment she stepped through the door, but as it was they were running low on personnel, and few enough of them were women. She spent most of her time with Tariq and Lucas, and they were both so caught up in their own problems that they took no notice of her jewelry. As the Senior Intelligence Analyst it was her job to shepherd a bevy of analysts, male and female, but she did not share the sort of camaraderie with them that she had with her former coworkers. She supposed it was a natural consequence of being the boss, but the full implications of her status within the hierarchy of the Grid had never quite struck her before today. As she ruminated on it she realized just how much things had changed, how she was now afforded the same level of respect as Harry himself. They were a team, the pair of them, in a way they never had been before Cotterdam, and their fellow agents deferred to her unquestioningly, and did not confide in her as they had done before. She thought she understood the reason for that now; no doubt they feared that any comments they might make to her would find their way back to Harry, and so they held their tongues in her presence.

 _That's a depressing thought._ Ruth loved being a part of a team, and she hated to think that she was somehow set apart from them. It was lonely at the top, she knew; she had watched Harry struggle to walk the line between boss and friend for years now. At the end of the day, though, he remained firmly in a position of authority, and she had to admit that regardless of her intentions she had taken on some of that authority as her own.

She was preparing to leave for the day, to make her way to choir practice and then home for a nice quiet meal, when an email came in to her from a sender she did not recognize. The message was encrypted, and the domain from which it was sent was not one she recognized. Curious, she clicked on it, and perused its contents.

There were several photographs, and as she studied them she realized that she was looking at what appeared to be a young Harry Pearce, unmistakable despite his slimmer frame and wealth of curly blonde hair. In one photo he stood by himself, and in the next he was embracing a woman with long auburn hair, and in the third Harry and the woman stood together, Harry cradling a little boy in his arms while the woman touched his face fondly.

The message said only _ask Harry about Berlin._


	10. Chapter 10

Ruth discreetly printed out the photographs and stared at them throughout the long bus ride from Thames House to her choir rehearsal. Her thoughts were chaotic, whirling around inside her head; who had sent the message? Why? Did they know about her engagement to Harry already, and if so, how? What were they trying to accomplish?

In the early days of Ruth's tenure on the Grid, when she was still just a fledgling spy sent to ferret out the secrets of Section D and beginning to wonder what exactly she'd gotten herself into, she had taken the liberty of perusing Harry's personnel file. Over time she had gone over many of his previous field reports; not only did they make for interesting reading, they also often supplied much needed answers to her questions. Why Harry was so tetchy about anything having to do with Northern Ireland, for example. She knew about the time he'd spent in Berlin, knew the names of the people he'd worked with and the details of many of their operations. Never once, during all of those clandestine research expeditions, had she ever come across the woman in the photos.

The woman was pretty, the kind of pretty that made a person stop and look twice. Her long, burnished auburn hair made her stand out, and she had the body of a dancer, lithe and graceful. And the way she looked at Harry in those photographs, the way he looked at her, seemed to imply that she had caught Harry's attention, too, and held it. It was not the thought that Harry might have been involved with this woman that troubled Ruth so; it had been decades since Harry had spent time in Berlin, and Ruth herself had been a child at the time. What troubled her was that Harry had been married while stationed in Berlin, and someone had felt that his activities there had merited her attention. To what end she could not say, and this troubled her still further.

She supposed she could have forgone her rehearsal and gone straight to Harry, brandished the photos under his nose and demanded an answer, but her feet had carried her out of the building on autopilot, and she could not organize her thoughts enough to face him now. This would need to be handled delicately, carefully; she didn't think that Harry would lie to her outright, but he'd spent the last thirty years keeping secrets, honing his deceptions, and she did not want to approach him until she had more information.

But how to get it? This was the question she focused on as she took her place with the altos and began to sing, hardly registering the notes on the pages held in her trembling hands. In order to trace the origin of the email and determine the validity of the photographs, she would likely need assistance. Over the last decade Ruth had learned a great deal about the technical side of espionage, thanks in large part to Colin and Malcolm; the pair of them had taken a great deal of joy in sharing their knowledge with anyone who happened by, and their enthusiasm had been infectious. When Ruth first arrived on the scene, bright-eyed and naïve, the two techies had taken her under their wing. Given that Ruth was an analyst, and inexperienced to boot, they had recognized that she was more like them, intellectual and hesitant, than like the brash, impulsive field agents. They had formed a merry little tribe, the three of them, and had worked well together, spending long nights bathed in the blue light of the Grid computers. Though Colin and Malcolm were each a bit awkward, they were kind-hearted, and she had been grateful to them for seeking her out, for making her feel welcome. And she had never forgotten it. As she sang she nearly wept to remember Colin, and the horrible, senseless way he died, to remember the ferocity of Malcolm's grief at having lost the one person who knew him best. Before that day Ruth had always thought of them as a pair, two peas in a pod, never one without the other. But then Colin was gone, and Malcolm was adrift without him.

Ruth knew a thing or two about that, having experienced it herself only a few months later, when she stood in the cabin of a lonely little river barge, watching Harry fade from view.

If Malcolm had been on the Grid, Ruth would not have hesitated to take the email and photographs to him, to request his aid. There were few things in life that were certain, but Malcolm's absolute loyalty to Harry was one of them. No matter how many years Ruth had spent on the Grid, she would always think of Malcolm as her senior in many ways, more experienced, more knowledgeable. These days, though, Malcolm had been replaced by Tariq, and Ruth shared no such confidence in the young man. He was just so… _young_ , with so much yet to learn. In their relationship, she was the authority, the one to whom he turned with problems, and she wasn't sure what might happen, should those roles be reversed. She worried about whether or not she could trust him with this, though it pained her to think that she would dare to doubt any member of her team. In the aftermath of Nightingale, however, when even the Home Secretary had been revealed to be a traitor, it was hard to have faith in anyone.

Anyone except Harry. Ruth knew she could depend on him, always, no matter what. Couldn't she?

It was entirely possible, she supposed, that the photographs were fabricated, nothing more than a ploy meant to sow discord between Ruth and her new fiancé. If so, it was working beautifully; Ruth knew nothing about the photos or the story they told, and already her confidence in her relationship with Harry was waning, fading as doubt began to wash over her once more.

So she sang, and fretted, and came to no conclusions whatsoever.

* * *

Harry hummed to himself as he set about making a bit of supper; he was enjoying a rare good mood, no doubt having been brought on by spending the previous evening tangled up in Ruth, and from spending an entire day watching her smile at him bashfully from across the Grid, a faint blush coloring her cheeks as she no doubt recalled the events of the night before. It had been in his mind to worry, before today, about how things might go between them in the office once their personal relationship began to change, but it seemed to him that those worries had been unfounded. They worked well together, always had done, and they both valued their work above nearly everything else in their lives. Ruth was Ruth, and always would be, regardless of what they did together under the cloak of darkness, and in her heart she passionately believed in the same ideals he did, in the importance of preserving freedom and democracy and their beloved realm. If anything, it seemed to him that having Ruth in his bed had helped to clear his mind, had helped him to focus, as he no longer devoted his downtime to fretting about her and the state of their relationship. For once he knew, with stunning clarity, exactly where they stood.

There were questions to be answered, of course; how long they planned to wait before holding the ceremony, for one. Whether she would move into his house, or he would move into her little flat, or they would find some place together, some place that was neither his nor hers but _theirs._ He quite liked that idea. People would need to be told; so far Ruth had only been wearing her engagement ring for one day, and so far no word of it, no whisper of gossip or nervous uttering of _congratulations,_ had reached his ear, and he knew that eventually they would need to mention it to the team if no one else brought it up first. Others would need to hear about it as well; Malcolm was due a phone call, certainly, as were Harry's children.

 _Oh Christ, Catherine,_ Harry thought glumly, feeling his cheerful mood dissipating somewhat at the notion of calling up his daughter with this happy news. Catherine had warmed to him in recent years, true, but she had always been a bit on the belligerent side, especially where his personal life was concerned. He shuddered to think how she would take it, when she learned that he was to marry a woman who was closer in age to Catherine than to Harry himself. And then there was the matter of Graham; it had been nearly a decade since Harry had last seen his son face to face, and he had no way of contacting him now. It was troubling, to think that he didn't even know where his own son was, what he was doing, how he was getting on. Most days Harry managed to bury that grief, that guilt, but in the face of his impending nuptials he knew he would be forced to confront his own failings as a father. Ruth deserved to know exactly what sort of man she was marrying.

This line of thought gave rise to another; how would Ruth feel, about including his children in their future? She knew he had a son and a daughter, but Harry could not recall ever having actually discussed them with her. What must she think of him, this man who never mentioned his children, whose own coworkers weren't even aware of their existence? And yet, for all of that, she had still said _yes_ , had still agreed to share her life and her love with him. Perhaps he wasn't as hopeless as he feared.

He was just sitting down to eat his meal when the doorbell rang, stirring him out of his thoughts. Ponderously he rose, grumbling just a little, and made his way down the hall.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see there was no one waiting for him. His old spook instincts kicked in and he took a step back, hiding in the shadows of the doorway while he examined the street in front of his home. There was no breath of wind, no leaves stirring in the trees, no billowing black coat disappearing around the corner. None of the cars were out of place, and he saw no sign of whoever had rung the bell. His heart pounded in his chest as he wondered what was happening, and why, and whether he was about to find himself lying on the floor with a bullet in his gut. With a trembling hand he reached out to close the door, and that was when he saw it; there was an envelope lying on his front step.

As quickly as he could Harry retrieved the envelope, locked the door, and returned to the kitchen, taking care not to linger too long by any of the windows. Though he had been sitting behind a desk for many years, his tradecraft remained as sharp as it ever was. It wasn't so very long ago he had strangled a man to death using his own necktie; a comfortable spook was a dead spook.

Carefully he eased the envelope open, holding it over the sink and taking care not to touch its contents as he shook it, mindful as always of the threat of pestilence delivered through the post. There was no fine white powder contained in this letter; inside he found only a few photographs. He turned them over carefully, frowning.

The first photograph showed a young Ruth, seventeen or eighteen at most, smiling as she stood on a beach, one hand raised to hold her sunhat in place while the wind swirled around her, lifting the skirt of the dress she wore, blowing her dark hair out behind her, making her look happier and more at ease than Harry had ever seen her. The next photograph had apparently been taken on the same day; Ruth was wearing the same dress, wrapped up in a stranger's arms, laughing as the wind blew her hat away. Harry stared at that photo for a long time, all trace of any residual happiness having completely disappeared beneath the weight of his worry and his guilt. How long had it been, he wondered, since she had last been that happy? Who was this young man who held her, who had shared in the joy and the rapture of her? And how had this photo come to be on his doorstep? Ruth had precious few mementos of her life before Cotterdam left, he knew; most of them had been lost, either to the endeavors of Section X or to her mother's aggressive tidiness in the wake of her "death". Who could possibly have gotten their hands on these photographs of a teenage Ruth? And why would they bother sending them to Harry?

So caught up was he in examining the photograph Ruth laughing in another man's arms that he almost didn't notice the third picture. Eventually though he turned his attention to it, and when he did he felt his heart sink in his chest. This was not a photograph, exactly, at least not in the traditional sense, but he recognized it, all the same. It was an ultrasound, a picture of a baby still in the womb. His eyes sought out the text, buried at the top corner of the grainy black and white image, fear gnawing at his guts as he read.

 _R. Evershed, 12 February, 1989._

His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the picture, and as it fell into the sink it turned, revealing words written on the back in heavy black scrawl.

 _Ask Ruth about Peter Haig,_ it said.


	11. Chapter 11

Tuesday night passed long and slow as Ruth sat curled in her favorite armchair, Nemo purring happily on her lap. Throughout the dark hours of the night she sat and fretted, worrying her new diamond ring between her fingers, wondering. Did it matter, she asked herself, who this woman had been, this woman Harry had known thirty years before? Did it matter what he had done, when he was young and headstrong and still finding his way in the world? She wanted to say _no._ She wanted to believe that no secret could be more powerful than the love she felt for him, that no past indiscretion could outweigh their need for one another. Ruth was a spook, though, and she knew better than most the danger of secrets. She had seen them work their horror, creeping inexorably like some terrible, indestructible vine. Secrets breed in the darkness, she knew, and where there was one, there were often more to be found, buried in the shadows. And she knew too the nature of the work Harry had done for most of his adult life, and so she fretted about the truth behind the photographs. Murder, torture, sex, scandal; these things were second nature to a man like Harry.

So no, she could not say with certainty that the truth behind the photographs would not cleave her heart in two.

What worried her still further was the origin of the photos. She knew that to trace them she would have no choice but to speak to Tariq; though she had tried to imagine some other way through it, some way to follow this path herself and not draw the young man into the fray, she knew that her own technical skills would not suffice to piece this puzzle together. And though she dearly longed to call on Malcolm, to look into his kindly eyes and feel the reassurance of his gentle presence, she knew that without access to the Grid's servers he would be unable to help her. Tariq it would have to be.

This in turn spawned another question; should she go to Tariq first, wait until she had more information until she confronted Harry, the man she loved, the man she had agreed to marry? It grieved her to think that there was anything, any worry, any doubt that she would not willingly take to him. It grieved her to think that for the first time in nearly a decade, she was not certain she could trust him. Yet she had hesitated tonight; though her mobile sat on the table by her right hand she did not pick it up, did not ring him, did not make her way to his home in the dead of night to lay bare her fears and her doubts and her desperate need to hear him offer her comfort. She hesitated, because it seemed to her that these photographs had been delivered to her with a clear purpose in mind, and that purpose left her paralyzed with uncertainty.

And so she did not sleep, so consumed by her own anxieties was she, and when the sun rose on Wednesday morning she dragged herself to her feet and began to prepare to face the day, to face Harry, still unsure of her path, still wary of her future.

* * *

Harry did not sleep on Tuesday night, though he lay in his bed, his face buried in a pillow that still smelled of Ruth. He did not sleep, for when he closed his eyes he saw the image of the ultrasound, and found himself quite overcome with a strange combination of guilt and jealousy. Guilt, because Ruth had been young once, had been young and happy and full of promise. It seemed to him that she had still been young when she first came to him, her eyes shining, her heart still tender and fresh, her spirit still hopeful and as yet unbroken. The images he'd seen of her, the photos he had held in his trembling hands, reminded him of everything she had borne for his sake, the pain and the grief and the loss and the gradual hardening of her heart.

And yet he felt jealousy, too, for he had held in his hands the evidence of her regard for another man. There was no way for him to know what story those photographs told, not without asking her, but there was no denying that _something_ had happened. How many times had he thought to himself what a wonderful mother she might make as he smiled at her across the darkness of the Grid? He recalled all too well her devastation after the loss of her young step-son, recalled the tremor in her tear-soaked voice as she pleaded with him to save the boy's life; _yes_ , she would have made a wonderful mother. And there was a part of him, however small, that would forever lament the fact that she was not the mother of _his_ children; he would not trade Catherine and Graham for anything in the world, but to have built a family with Ruth would have brought him more joy than he could say. And though his dream would never come to be, it seemed to him that Ruth already had dreams of her own, hopes of her own, that did not include him.

The message on the back of the ultrasound troubled him still further; _ask Ruth about Peter Haig_ , it said. That was something Harry had not done, even in the aftermath of the Angela Wells debacle. He had taken the information that was given to him by the personnel files, drawn his own conclusions, and asked no questions. Ruth herself had told him that she lied, when she told Angela that she'd slept with her own step-brother, and her disgust had been palpable as they stood, chests heaving, facing one another in a dim hallway. Until this night, her words had been enough for him; Ruth told him it was a lie, that she had never done such a thing, and he accepted that. The photographs seemed to imply otherwise, but Harry found no condemnation for her in his heart. They were teenagers when they met, Ruth and Peter, each of them half an orphan, each of them broken in their own way, and he could not find fault with her, for finding shelter in the arms of an inappropriate companion; there was no blood between them, after all. And Harry felt he was not in a position to judge her for her past sins, given the sheer volume of his own.

There remained the question of where the photographs had come from; once he realized what he was seeing he had treated them carefully, trying not to handle them too much in the hopes that he could deliver them to Tariq, and perhaps turn up some clues about their origins. He would need to proceed delicately, he knew; they were in the midst of an operation, with Lucas preparing to fly out to Morocco in the morning, and tensions were high. It would not do to take the photos to Tariq before speaking to Ruth herself about them, and he intended to do so as soon as he saw her, when she brought him his tea. That was not a conversation he was particularly looking forward to, but he knew he owed her that much, knew that she deserved the chance to tell her own story, to make her wishes known before he delivered this piece of her personal history into Tariq's hands for clinical evaluation.

In all the years since they first met, Harry had learned a great deal about Ruth. He had read over her personnel file, her psychiatric evaluations, had seen her shatter, had seen her shine. He was no stranger to her grief and to her hope; he liked to think that he shared those things with her. So why had someone felt the need to send him these photos? There was nothing in Ruth's past that could possibly make him love her any less, and he knew it, for he knew _her_. It made no sense to him, but the timing of it troubled him almost more than anything else. It seemed to Harry that someone out there knew about their recent engagement, despite the fact that it had only happened a few days before, and Ruth had only that day appeared in public wearing her ring for the first time. Who had known, who had been able to pull together these photographs so quickly?

Distrust was a familiar feeling, and as Harry tossed and turned in his bed that night, he couldn't escape the sensation that he was being watched. Someone knew, someone knew what Ruth meant to him, someone knew how to infiltrate her past, and someone was trying to send him a message he could not yet fathom. The how and the why all swirled together, and left him sleepless and irritable.

* * *

 _It's just another day,_ she told herself as she made her way onto the Grid. She kept her head down, sat down at her station, booted up her computer. She stowed her bag in the drawer to her left, and, taking a deep breath, she raised her eyes to Harry's office. And when she did she found his gaze trained on her face as ever, but there was no soft smile waiting for her when she looked upon him this morning. He looked tired, and sad, and the sight of him sitting there, behind his barricade of glass, lonely and sorrowful, tugged at her heartstrings. Ruth forced herself to smile at him, though her smile was a pitiful little thing, weak and fleeting. In turn the corner of Harry's mouth ticked up as he put forth his own effort at a greeting, and failed just as miserably.

 _What's wrong with him?_ she wondered even as she rose, and marched off to make their tea. She would have to ask, when she ventured into his office; Harry did not readily share the truth of his heart. Except with her, except when she asked him to, and he would take a deep breath, and plunge beneath the waves of their self-doubt and prevarication, and offer her a glimpse of himself. Always before Ruth treasured those rare moments of openness, of vulnerability, but today her steps were heavy and uncertain. Whatever grief had visited him in the night would have to do battle with her own, as she wondered what to say to him, how best to broach the subject of the photographs, or if she might just be better off burning them and pretending they had never existed. As much as she might wish otherwise, she knew that such a gesture would be futile; the images and the doubt they sowed in her spirit could not be denied.

Eventually she could delay no longer, and she made her way into his office. She noted with some trepidation as she slid the door closed behind her that Harry had drawn the blinds across his windows in a bid to offer them privacy, but he was not standing by the desk, waiting to greet her with a kiss and a smile. He was sitting his chair, his fingers steepled together in front of him, a thoughtful look upon his face.

"Good morning," Ruth said, making no attempt to sound cheery. The mood in his office was somber, grim, even, and it frightened her. With little ceremony she passed him a mug of tea, and settled down in her usual chair, watching him all the while, wondering what new sort of trouble was brewing beneath his frank stare.

"Good morning, Ruth," he said. Instead of reaching for his tea and asking about the daily schedule as was his usual routine, he reached into his desk drawer, and retrieve a stack of photographs, sealed inside protective plastic wrapping. "I'm so sorry," he continued, and she couldn't help but see the truth behind the apology, see how truly contrite he appeared as he passed the photos over to her. "These were left on my doorstep last night."

Gingerly Ruth deposited her tea on the corner of the desk, and reached out to take the photographs. She could not help the gasp that escaped her as she realized just what exactly she was holding.

* * *

Harry had only to take one look at Ruth's horror-stricken face, and he knew then that he had done the right thing. Whatever tale those photos told, it was something that Ruth did not want to face, and he was glad he had gone to her first, rather than going straight to Tariq. Though he wanted to press her for more, to swoop in while she was unsettled and more likely to answer him bluntly, he hesitated, not wanting to hurt this woman who had already suffered so very much, this woman he loved with all his heart.

"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," he said, though he dearly wished to know her secrets, every one of them.

"How?" she raised her gaze to meet his own, and her ocean-blue eyes swimming with unshed tears.

"I don't know." Harry kept his voice soft and low, not wanting to put her on the defensive. "I mean to have Tariq take a look at them, but I wanted to speak to you first."

Ruth's tears burst forth in a sudden storm he had not anticipated, and the sheer ferocity of her response left him reeling. For a time he simply sat and let her cry, while his own doubts gnawed at his heart.


	12. Chapter 12

For several long moments Ruth simply wept; she found herself overwhelmed and overcome by everything that had happened over the last five days, and all of her fears, all of her doubts, all of her grief and all of her guilt came pouring out of her in a single, endless wave. She wept to see the photos Harry held in his hands, to wonder what he must think of her, what he _would_ think of her, once he knew the truth. And she wept to know that not only had Harry been dealing with this while she had been struggling beneath her own burdens, Harry had faced the same question that had troubled her all through the long, sleepless night, and he had come up with a different answer. He had trusted her, when she had doubted him. He had come to her first, rather than digging through her past uninvited. The magnitude of the trust he'd placed in her, and the magnitude of her own doubts, left her reeling. How could she have even considered going to Tariq first? How could she have dared to do such a thing to Harry? She hadn't yet spoken to the young techie, but that had been her plan, and it galled her to think that she had even entertained the notion.

"Ruth." Harry spoke her name in that soft, gentle tone he sometimes used with her, as if he were afraid of her, afraid of her reactions, and she desperately tried to bring herself back under control, to focus in the present. It pained her to think that she had given him cause to be nervous with her, and she wanted, very much, to prove to him that she was not all barbed words and hesitation. There was time still, time for them to work through this together, as they were meant to. No doubt the photos were intended to drive a wedge between them, and whoever was behind this attack on their domestic bliss had very nearly gotten their wish. Ruth made a vow, there and then, to be honest with Harry, to lean on him, and to earn the trust he had bestowed upon her.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, her voice no more than a ragged sigh.

Harry rose from behind his desk, and crossed to sit in the chair beside hers, reaching out to clasp her hand in his own. At the touch of his hand she raised her tear-streaked face and looked at him, _really_ looked at him, took in the warmth radiating from his soft hazel eyes, the concern etched in every line of his familiar face. This was Harry, Harry whom she loved, Harry whom she had agreed to marry, Harry who had carried her through horror and triumph and helped to shape the woman she had become. Without Harry, she wasn't sure who she would be, and she had no interest in finding out.

"Don't be sorry," he said softly, reaching out to brush the tears from her cheek with a gentle hand. "You've done nothing wrong."

The photographs Ruth had received were stashed in a folder at the bottom of the stack she'd brought with her into his office; regretfully, she slipped her hand from his grasp, and shuffled through the pages until she found what she was looking for. With a heavy heart, she handed them over to him.

"Those were sent to me yesterday, via encrypted email."

It was Harry's turn to look grim. As he perused the photos, Ruth studied his face, wondering for the thousandth time who the woman had been, who the child had been, what secret Harry was harboring that he had deemed to volatile for her ears. She knew the truth of her own past, knew how heavy her own secrets weighed; how much greater would be the burden of Harry's heart?

"I will tell you everything, Ruth," Harry said, raising his gaze from the photographs to stare at her beseechingly.

"And I will tell you everything," she promised in return, wishing she didn't have to, knowing she had no choice.

"I'm not sure this is the right place for that conversation, but I promise you, Ruth, I will tell you. For the moment, though, I think we have greater concerns."

Ruth nodded; she recognized the moment that Harry assumed once more the mantle of Section Head, when his personal concern was overruled by the broader implications of their predicament.

"Someone is targeting us," he continued. Ruth fought the urge to laugh aloud at that; he had a tendency to state the obvious, her Harry. But she loved him for it.

"Who would know, Harry? Not just about Berlin and…" her voice betrayed her, cracking just a little as she prepared herself to speak her stepbrother's name aloud for the first time since Angela Wells had come storming on the Grid with havoc following in her wake. "And Peter," she soldiered on, noting the way Harry's brow furrowed, just a little, at the mention of the name. "But about us? I haven't told anyone yet."

"Nor have I," Harry conceded. "But then, we wouldn't have to tell anyone, would we?" Once more he reached for her hand, his thumb brushing gently over her ring. "It wouldn't take a genius to work it out, would it, Ruth? My…personal feelings for you are a matter of record at this point."

It was true, and Ruth knew it. Twice now she had been used by Harry's enemies, forced into a game she had never agreed to play, forced into danger, all for his sake, and for the sake of the love he bore her. She found no ill will in her heart, though, no disdain for him or his affections or for the trouble they had brought her. Her love ran as deep and as true as his, even if neither of them had ever spoken the words aloud.

"That's true," she said slowly, "but I received the email yesterday as I was leaving. The only people I saw during the day were members of our team."

"You think someone is watching us?" Harry asked shrewdly. Ruth could only nod, impressed as always by the way their minds seemed to work in tandem. They were working with a bare bones team, at present, and it seemed unlikely that Tariq or Lucas or one of the bumbling junior analysts could have been in a position to dig up the damning photographs over the course of a single day.

"It's possible. Someone could have a bug on either of our phones, or in your home."

Harry paled slightly at that. "It's possible, but unlikely."

"Is it?" Ruth fired back. The ghost of a smile danced across his plump lips; the moment was too weighty for such levity, but she saw the flash of heat in his eyes, felt the way he responded to her challenge. The battle of wills between them had been constant almost from the moment that they first met, and she was certain that he derived as much pleasure from it as did she.

"Very well. I'll have Tariq take apart both of our mobiles, and I'll liberate a bit of kit, check my house for bugs this evening."

To Ruth that seemed as good a place as any to start. The thought of anyone running surveillance on Harry's home gave birth to a strong desire to run and hide; she couldn't bear the thought of anyone else being privy to what had passed between them on Monday night. It was too personal, too special, too intimate, and to think that any one, let alone someone who was intending to tear them apart, could have heard or seen them left her feeling vaguely nauseous.

"Shall I ask him to look into the email, as well?"

Harry considered this for a moment. Ruth could see all too plainly that he was struggling, caught between his desire to keep his secrets, and his need to know who was mucking about in their lives. She knew already the conclusion he would draw, but she allowed him to come to it on his own, rather than pushing him when they were both of them feeling raw and exposed.

"I think we'll have to," he said finally. "But I don't want to give him any more information than he needs to trace the email."

"And to check these for fingerprints," Ruth added, brandishing the plastic-shielded photos she still held on her lap. The question was there, lurking just behind Harry's eyes, but he did not ask it, and she was grateful to him for his circumspection. He was right; his office was not the place for this conversation. She would tell him everything but here, now, sitting on the Grid, she did not want to raise the ghosts of their pasts. She wanted to be with Harry.

"Yes. Can you handle that? I have a meeting with the Home Secretary in an hour, and there are some calls I need to make before then."

It sounded strangely like a dismissal, and for a moment the feeling of resigned acceptance her vow of honesty had brought her was tested by the doubts still knocking upon her door. Who was he calling? Was it to do with the photos? Was he already spinning a web of deceit, intent upon keeping the truth from her?

"I will tell you everything," Harry said, giving her hand a little squeeze. "Come home with me tonight. You can help me check the house for bugs, and then I will tell you everything you need to know."

Ruth knew she had reached a sort of crossroads here; she could be petulant, and demand more, or she could trust him, could give him the time he was asking for, and wait for the answers she so dearly sought. She took a deep, tremulous breath, and nodded.

Very carefully, Harry leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Thank you, Ruth."

She smiled at him, a little wanly, hoping she wouldn't come to regret her decision.

* * *

Ruth found Tariq, as ever, behind a bank of computer monitors in the back of the Forgery Suite. Though he was not Malcolm, she had come to care for this young man, to appreciate his dry wit and his dedication to the job. The only people who worked longer hours than Tariq were Harry and Ruth themselves; many nights he could be found still on the Grid, pecking away at his vast array of machines with an endless supply of tea and biscuits by his elbow. What she was about to ask him was more than she had ever envisioned; he had been working with them just over a year, and with a start Ruth realized that she knew very little about his personal life beyond what could be found in his MI-5 file. His history, his story was very much a mystery to her, and she knew that there was no telling what might be lurking there. Still, though, she would not find the answers she sought if she did not ask for help, and so she cleared her throat, and announced her presence.

Tariq nearly fell out of his chair, startled by her stealthy arrival.

"What are you working on?" she asked, allowing the young man a reassuring smile.

"I'm checking up on Lucas; he's left for Morocco. Once he's on the boat we'll lose contact with him, and I want to make sure there aren't any surprises waiting for him."

 _Of course,_ Ruth thought glumly. In the midst of her own personal chaos, she had all but forgotten the operation. It all seemed very far away, just now, all the spying and back room machinations, the government ordered assassinations and endless plots. She berated herself for allowing her emotions to get in the way of her work, but only for a moment; whoever was behind the photos represented a very real and very serious security risk, and they needed to be stopped before they were able to cause more damage than they already had done.

"I need your help," she told Tariq, and he snapped to attention, his focus for once totally on her, and not on his monitors. Briefly she outlined the situation, explained about the email and the photos left on Harry's doorstep.

"We need to find out who's behind this," she told him, still clutching the photos in her hands. The evidence against Harry did not speak nearly so eloquently as the ultrasound she was so hesitant to hand over, and she worried about what sort of questions he might ask, once he'd had a chance to review the evidence. "We just need to know who's sending the pictures, Tariq. The rest is between me and Harry."

For a moment Tariq's eyes flickered to the little diamond sparkling on her finger, but they promptly snapped back up to her face. "Right," he said slowly. "Trace the email, look for fingerprints. I can do that."

"And not a word to anyone," Ruth added.

"Of course."

And that was that. Ruth left the photographs in Tariq's very capable hands, and made her way back to her desk, thinking hard. Thinking about the ultrasound, and that tumultuous time in her life, thinking about Peter as he had been before he joined the Royal Protection Service, when they were both of them young and still hopeful, before their lives had been torn asunder by that foolish hope and service to their country. She thought about Harry, and his mystery woman, and the little boy in the photographs. Secrets upon secrets, lies upon lies; she was looking forward to the chance to speak with Harry frankly, to vent the truth, and bring them both a bit of peace. And she was hoping to that maybe, just maybe, she might have the chance to spend another night in his bed, safe and sheltered within the circle of his arms.


	13. Chapter 13

All through the long day, the photos Ruth had shown him niggled at the back of his mind, those photos of himself, nearly thirty years younger and a hundred times more foolish, standing next to Elena Gavrick. For Harry, it had been many years since he'd given a thought to Elena and the boy, much as he was loath to admit it; time had passed, and he had more pressing things to worry about than an affair long since ended, an affair that had culminated in hopelessness and ruin. Why should he worry about Elena Gavrick, when every day there was a new threat, a new terror, a new heartbreak looming on the horizon? Why waste his time on the ghosts of the past?

He could not shake the memories this day, however, could not help but recall the sound of her voice, the way his heart used to lift whenever she drew near. There had been a time when he thought that what he felt for her was love, as impossible as it was to believe that now. Now that he knew what it meant to truly love a woman, to lose his heart and not just his head. Elena had been beautiful, and they had shared many a charming conversation, but in the end that was all Elena had ever been; charmed, and disastrous. Ruth, and the way he felt for her, was something else entirely. How could he explain this to her, though? How could he tell her that he had been ensnared by Elena's physical enchantments, despite the fact that he had a wife and children at home? What would she think of him, once he had?

And there was the matter of the boy to be explained, as well. Sasha was not his son; he had learned the truth the night he was set to extract Elena from Berlin, when Jim Coaver had come to him, and told him everything, while he sat in a chair holding his head in his hands. She had set the perfect trap for him; Elena knew him, knew that despite his tendency towards reckless behavior and his loose interpretation of his wedding vows that he was an honorable man, and that he would stand up to defend and care for his son. It was a brilliant ploy, truly, and it was only that very frank conversation with Jim that had opened his eyes to the truth, and saved him from calamity. If Elena had had her way, he would have brought her back to England with him, and likely lost his family for her sake, all the while unwittingly feeding information to a KGB operative. It was brilliant, and so callous that even now the thought of it turned his stomach.

All of this, all of the lies, the betrayal, was something he had longed to shield Ruth from. She had seen her share of horrors in this life, in service to her country, had lost her family and her hope. It seemed to Harry that she was better off not knowing, and that chances were he would never have cause to explain to her this blight upon his past. Now, though, he had no choice. He loved her, and he would have to tell her everything, and pray that it was not more than she could bear.

Five o'clock rolled around, and he found that for once he had no desire to linger on the Grid. They were set for their next operation, which would not truly begin until the boat departed on Friday. He and Ruth had made their plans for the evening, and he would much rather be at home with her than stuck behind his desk, mulling over paperwork and every poor decision he'd ever made. He looked up from his pile of files, and sought out Ruth across the Grid. She was working diligently, as ever, but for once the sight of her did not calm his troubled heart. How could it be, he wondered, that someone like Ruth, someone with such a sure sense of morality, someone who was so very _good,_ someone who had suffered so much, could ever possibly want to be with someone like him? He was darkness, and she was light, and he could not understand how it was that she could be drawn to him, despite his many failings. Whatever her reason, he was grateful for her, grateful for her steady presence in his life, grateful for the love she gave him, despite their tumultuous history. He could not help but wonder, though, when the other shoe would drop, when she would realize that he was no good for her, and she must part from him. It seemed not just possible, but imminent, that she would learn the truth of his traitorous heart, and leave him shattered and alone.

He could not deny her the truth, however, and so he rose from his desk, and made his way to her station. Though he had devoted a great deal of time to brooding over his own mistakes, he had not given nearly as much consideration to the photographs that had been left on his doorstep. Whatever lurked in Ruth's past, he knew he loved her still, and that it could not be enough to shake his steadfast affection for her.

"Home time," he murmured softly, watching as she registered his presence, lifting her head to face him and offering him a wan little smile. He saw in that smile his own trepidation, and his own fierce desire to find a way through this mess, together, and so he took comfort in it.

"Do you have a driver tonight?" she asked as she set about shutting down her computer, stowing her files and gathering her things.

"I'm afraid so," he answered, and, feeling rather bold, he lifted her coat from the back of her chair and held it out for her, helping her to slide inside it and taking the opportunity to brush the tips of his fingers against the curve of her neck as he lifted her hair free from the collar. This was what he'd missed today, what he'd needed; he needed to feel her, to hold her, to know that whatever he had done she was still with him, that they would weather this storm together.

He felt her shiver beneath his touch, saw the appraising look she gave him as she turned to face him; no doubt she was wondering what had inspired his sudden display of chivalry. For his part he only smiled, and gestured to the pods.

"Shall we go?"

* * *

The drive from Thames House to Harry's was quiet; neither of them were interested in discussing their current predicament where they could be overheard, even if Mike was an ostensibly trustworthy fellow. It was hard to know who to trust these days; the shadow of Nightingale was long and lingering, and it colored their every move. Still, though, Ruth had chosen to trust in Harry, and so she sat beside him in the car, their fingers interlaced as he held her hand, and she tried not to worry. They had borrowed some kit from Tariq, though she wasn't sure it counted as borrowing since they had not told the young man they were taking it. _Perks of being the boss,_ Harry had said, and for once, Ruth did not question him.

They arrived at Harry's, bid Mike farewell, and trudged into the house together. As they went Ruth took a moment to examine the street in front of Harry's home, looking for anything unusual or out of place. She was not so familiar with his neighborhood as to pinpoint which cars belonged and which didn't, but it seemed to her to be a street much like any other, with no obvious dangers lurking in the shadows. _It's not the obvious that troubles me,_ she thought glumly as she stepped into Harry's home.

Scarlet greeted them as exuberantly as ever, and Harry dutifully walked through the house with her, letting out into his little fenced-in garden through the door in the kitchen. Ruth followed in their wake, biting her lip and asking herself _where do we go from here?_ She had no idea how to even begin the conversation that she knew they must have; she could only hope that Harry had already conceived a plan.

He had, as it happened. The moment Scarlet was safely romping in the garden, he turned and wrapped his arms around her, his lips descending on hers hungrily. The sheer passion of his kiss caught Ruth off guard, and she was helpless to resist him; all thoughts of their troubles vanished in an instant as she caught him by the lapels and dragged him closer to her, opening her lips beneath his own with a whimper of capitulation. For several long minutes he simply kissed her, his hands roaming freely over her body, his tongue brushing against her own, setting her ablaze with longing for him. Eventually, though, he tore his mouth from his ears, and leaned to whisper in her ear, "Let's clean house first."

Ruth nodded, breathless and dizzy and drunk on the taste of him. She would never tire of his kisses, of his brutal, consuming affections; with each new taste of him, she craved him all the more.

Still, though, there was work to be getting on with, and so they retreated to the front hall, where Ruth pulled the equipment from her bag, and they set to work. They checked the house methodically, painstakingly searching every nook and crevice from the front all to the bedrooms upstairs. At the end of two hours, they were both hungry, tired, and irritable, not least of all because they'd managed to ferret out four small listening devices. Harry tucked them into a small plastic bag, and frowned at Ruth from his post in the kitchen doorway.

She returned that frown, her heart stuttering frantically in her chest. Who could possibly have done such a thing? She wondered. Who possessed the skills to break into Harry's home and plant the bugs unnoticed? Were there more little bugs, or little cameras, hidden in places they could not detect? Her skin was crawling, as if she could feel the weight of someone else's eyes upon her back. _I have to get out of here,_ she thought, panic making her bold.

In three quick steps she crossed the room, and took Harry by the hand. She pressed her finger against his lips, to silence his question, and though it clearly galled him, he did as she requested, and did not speak a word. Ruth led him by the hand back to the front hall, where they both donned their coats, before they slipped out into the night on foot.

"What's this all about?" Harry asked when they were two streets away from his house. Ruth kept glancing over her shoulder; she hadn't noted any surveillance on them as they walked, and she could only hope that her observation skills were up to snuff.

"We can't stay there, Harry," she explained as they walked. "Your house needs to be scrubbed, properly."

He grumbled a bit at that, but did not actually protest, and she took heart from this, knowing that he knew, as she did, that she was right. "And we can't be sure that my flat is safe, either. If they can get into your house, I've no doubt they can break into my flat. It isn't exactly hard."

"Remind me to have you relocated at the first opportunity," Harry said.

The comment brought Ruth up short; she knew he hadn't meant anything by it, that he was just bristling at her lack of security, but it did raise the question of where she might be living in the future, and how quickly her circumstances might change. The idea of living with Harry was more appealing by the day; when, she wondered. How? Where?

 _Focus on the present,_ she chided herself.

"We can catch a bus, and go to a hotel for the night," she continued, laying out the plan that had formed in her mind while they stood glowering at each other in the kitchen.

"A bus?" Harry protested weakly. Ruth gave his hand a gentle squeeze, trying not to smile.

"A bus," she confirmed.

Beside her, Harry sighed.

* * *

Harry was not particularly fond of public transport. He could allow that it served a purpose, filled a need, and could be particularly useful when he found himself in situations such as this, when he needed to be sure that he wasn't being followed. But it was slow, and the clientele unpredictable. The bus in particular was troublesome; it's hard to escape your opposite number if you're both trapped on the same bus, and at this time of night there were few enough people that hiding on a bus became difficult. But Ruth was holding his hand, leading him to a seat near the back, where they could sit together, sheltered in the darkness, and he could not help the way his heart beat a little faster at her proximity. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, buoyed by the hint of danger and the newness of this particular experience, riding a bus with Ruth. They had done it once before, true, but their interaction had been lamentably brief, and he had not been given the opportunity to watch her face shimmering in the passing streetlights. His view of her was unimpeded now, and he could not stop himself from leaning over, and kissing her once again.

"You're a born spook, Ruth," he breathed when they parted, and he saw with some satisfaction that the comment brought a rosy blush to her cheeks.

"I like to think I've learned from the best," she murmured.

Harry grinned, and kissed her again.

* * *

They checked into the hotel under one of Harry's legends; if the desk clerk thought it odd, that they'd wandered in off the street and neither of them were carrying luggage, he didn't mention it, and only wished them a pleasant stay. They nodded their thanks and slipped into the elevator as quickly as possible; Ruth had been on the lookout all the while, and she had seen no sign of a tail, for which she was duly grateful. Harry bundled her into the room and locked the door behind them, and Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. For the moment they were safe, here in this nondescript room in this nondescript hotel. They could be anyone, going anywhere, doing anything, and she relished the freedom such a thought afforded her. No one knew where they were or what they were getting up to, and that liberation left her feeling bold. Briefly she considered shelving their conversation for later, and pulling Harry into her arms and down onto the soft duvet; the thought of his hands on her skin, his lips against hers, their bodies thrusting and melding together in this anonymous, in-between sort of place was a heady one, but she shook it off. There was a conversation they needed to have, and for both their sakes it should be now, and not later.

"I'll order us some room service, and then we can talk," Harry said gruffly, reaching for the phone. Ruth nodded her agreement, but did not bothering telling him what to order; after eight years, he knew her well enough to anticipate her needs. And he did; he ordered them food, and champagne as well, and Ruth smiled just a little at that. She might have managed to drag him onto a bus, but he was still Harry, her Harry, and she loved him.

Once he was done they made their way to the two small chairs in the corner, sitting down together at the little table. Harry reached out, and took her hand in his own.

"I know you must be confused," he said slowly, "and I want to answer all your questions. The first thing you need to know is that the woman in those photographs means nothing to me now. It's been years since I even thought of her."

Perhaps that was meant to be reassuring, but Ruth couldn't help but wonder if one day he would forget her so easily. She hoped not; eight years was a bloody long time to carry a torch for someone, and she hoped that more time together would only bring them closer, and not tear them apart.

Ruth opened her mouth to ask her first question, but Harry just smiled at her wryly, and beat her to the punch.

"Her name is Elena Gavrick," he said.

" _Christ,_ Harry," Ruth sighed, leaning back in her chair. The little tour Ruth had taken through Harry's personnel file had told her everything she needed to know about Ilya Gavrick, Harry's opposite number in Berlin, a consummate spy turned successful politician. That Harry had bedded the man's wife while they'd been spying on one another beggared belief; it was so far beyond reckless as to be called foolhardy.

"I know, it was a bad decision. But you have to understand, Ruth, I was young. I was a long way from home, my marriage was falling apart, and I lived with the knowledge that I could die at any moment. She manipulated me, let me think I'd turned her when in reality she was the one mining me for information. Jim Coaver found out the truth, and he stopped me doing something truly reckless."

"More reckless than carrying on an affair with her, when you were both married?" Ruth asked. She couldn't help herself; she knew about Harry's somewhat spotty personal history where fidelity was concerned – she had met Juliet Shaw, after all – but to be faced with it so bluntly, all the while wearing the ring he'd put on her finger, brought it into rather harsh perspective.

"The boy – Sasha – is Elena's son. She told me that he was mine."

There was such a sorrow in Harry's voice, shining out so earnestly from his soft brown eyes, that Ruth realized with sudden clarity where this story was going. Her heart went out to him; he had been young, and brash, but he was still Harry, and she knew how that would have affected him, thinking that the charming little boy from the photographs was his son. He'd move heaven and earth for his children; Ruth knew this for a fact, having read the report he was forced to file after rescuing Catherine from Lebanon.

"Harry," she said softly, but before she could continue, he cut her off.

"He isn't, of course, but I very nearly extracted the pair of them and brought them with me back to England. Jim put a stop to that, for which I'm truly grateful."

"It must have been horrible for you," she said slowly, thinking hard. Did it matter, really, that Harry had cheated on his first wife so very long ago, when Ruth herself had been no more than a teenager? People change, over the course of their lives, and no one had seen more, experienced more than Harry. He had waited eight years for her; she had no reason to doubt his faithfulness.

Before he could respond, there came a knock upon the door. Their food had arrived, and the rest of the conversation would have to wait.


	14. Chapter 14

The arrival of their supper offered them both a brief respite, and an opportunity to consider their words carefully before they next spoke. There was something different about this sort of silence, it seemed to Harry; there was something thoughtful, and comfortable, and almost safe about sitting with this woman he loved, knowing that he had shared one of his darkest secrets, a secret that had spelled the end of his marriage, and she had been, if not untroubled, at least not troubled enough to leave him. She was still here with him, sharing her meal and her time and her comforting presence in the anonymity of this hotel room, and for that he was duly grateful. He would always be grateful for her, his Ruth, his sure and steady compass, the living embodiment of his beating heart.

It had frightened him, the honesty required of him to speak the truth to Ruth, the truth about Elena, about his infidelity, about the child who could so easily have been his. Yet it had not escaped his notice that Ruth had secrets of her own to share with him, secrets that apparently included a child as well. _Quite the pair, aren't we?_ He mused as he watched her, eating delicately and eyeing him speculatively all the while. _Both of us with secrets to keep, with burdens to bear._

The temporary distraction afforded them by their meal would not last indefinitely, he knew; supper would draw to a close, and the conversation would continue, picking up from where they'd left off. And what an interesting starting point that would be, he thought as he finished his meal, and rose from his chair to open the champagne. Ruth did not appear to be angry with him; though she had expressed some disappointment, upon learning that he had been foolish enough to bed Ilya Gavrick's wife, her final comment on the matter had been _it must have been horrible for you._ He'd been pondering that statement, all through their quiet meal. She had not spat out accusations, had not been cross; she had been sympathetic, upon learning how he had been duped into believing the boy was his. She had seen straight through the salacious details to the heart of the matter, and she had offered him comfort, rather than recrimination.

But then she always did, his Ruth. Those eyes, so bewitching in their brilliance, had always possessed the ability to look past his bluster and bravado, and into the depths of his very soul. It was to her that he turned, when he was uncertain, when he was in need of someone to confide in, someone to discuss the difficult decisions that comprised his life. And every time he did, he found her counsel to be a balm to his weary spirit, her soft voice reassuring him, even when she told him that he was wrong. Not for the first time he found himself wondering what he would be without this woman, and shuddering at the very thought.

Carefully, Harry poured them each a glass of champagne, and Ruth accepted hers with a little smile. They clinked their glasses together, and he resumed his seat, sipping his drink, and watching this woman, this glorious, utterly incomprehensible woman. He might not ever know the truth of her thoughts, the inner workings of her mind, but he knew her well enough, and he loved her for it.

"Thank you for telling me about Elena," Ruth said finally, pushing her plate away and leaning back in her chair, cradling her glass in her hand. "That can't have been easy."

"I probably should have told you years ago," he confessed. She quirked her eyebrow at him, and he smiled ruefully at her. He hadn't intended to say that, to reveal that he had thought of her as _his_ for so long now that he had almost forgotten they'd only been together for a few days. She owned him, heart and soul, and always had. Even before he knew that he loved her, knew that he needed her, he had found himself drawn to her, captivated by her and everything that she did.

"Is that all of it, then? You had an affair, she lied about the boy, Jim told you the truth and you ended it?" As always, her analysis was succinct and to the point. Even now, when the subject at hand was so very personal, she seemed able to navigate the murky waters of his past, and to understand them.

Harry nodded. "Yes. I promise you, Ruth, she's nothing to me now. She hasn't been, from the moment I learned she was a spy."

It was Ruth's turn to offer him a nod in acknowledgement. "I suppose that means it's my turn," she said with a little sigh. Harry hated to see her worrying so, to see her looking so forlorn as she sat across from him, her shoulders hunched as if she were cold and trying to draw into herself, looking for a piece of warmth. She had kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up beneath her, and that coupled with the rosy blush the champagne had brought to her cheeks and the artful tumble of her hair made her look so _young_ ; in moments like these, Harry looked at her and saw the girl she had been, when she first came to him, naïve and unused to his world of horrors, but still trying so damn hard to be good, to be brave, to be strong. He had harbored deep affections for that girl, but he loved this woman she had become.

"Ruth, you don't have to do anything you don't want to," he told her softly. It pained him to say those words aloud; he wanted, very much, to hear the story she was about to tell him, but he worried for her, worried that the effort of such a revelation might be more than she could bear. She had always been painfully private, giving details of her life so sparingly that when she was stolen from him in the wake of Cotterdam he had realized that he did not even know the names of her cats. They each wore little collars, with little tags on them; without those tags, he would have been forced to create new names for them. He smiled as he recalled that, remembering the hour he had spent trying to corral them at her home before whisking them off to his. Ruth saw that smile and looked at him strangely, and he took the opportunity to school his features once more into a neutral expression, not wanting to explain to her that he had been thinking about her cats.

"I _want_ to tell you, Harry," she said. "You've been honest with me tonight, and I want to be honest in return."

"Then I'm all ears, Ruth," he responded. He folded his hands together on the table and gave her his undivided attention as she began to speak.

"Peter was two years older than me," she began in a halting sort of voice, refusing to meet his gaze as she laid out her tale of woe. "We were teenagers when our parents married; they weren't well-suited, David and my mother, and Peter and I knew it. They argued, all the time. He and I used to sneak out of the house when they started to snipe at each other; sometimes we'd have a meal, see a film, but mostly we just wandered around. He was…he was always a troubled soul, Harry."

At this she looked up at him, and he saw all too plainly the pain swimming in the depths of her eyes. They had never spoken about Peter, he and Ruth, apart from the day she had come to ask if she could take off work to attend his funeral. He'd read the psychological reports, had read that Angela Wells had been deeply insecure in her relationship with Peter Haig, and that she blamed Ruth for it. And Ruth had refused point-blank to discuss her stepbrother with the psychologist, which was telling in itself. At the time of Angela's breakdown, it had seemed the obvious choice, to send Ruth in to speak with her, to prey on her fears and speed the inevitable crumbling of her resolve. At the time, he thought it had worked. Now, though, knowing everything that had come after, he wasn't so sure.

"One day they were…particularly cross, so Peter stole the keys to his father's car, and we ran away. We went to Blackpool."

 _I told her I slept with my stepbrother._

She was quiet for a long time, thinking, and Harry was quiet for a long time, watching her. Did it matter, he asked himself, if Ruth _had_ slept with Peter Haig? Yes, they'd been stepsiblings, but as she'd said, they were teenagers when they met, and there was no blood between them. He could understand it, in a way; he was sure that young Ruth had been as hesitating, as withdrawn as the woman he knew her to be now, and it made sense that she would trust her stepbrother, the only other person who understood what she was going through without having to be told. And besides, it had all happened so very long ago, and Peter Haig was dead, and Harry himself had had his share of questionable liaisons. No, he decided, it didn't matter, really, beyond the fact that he was concerned for Ruth, and the scars she might bear as a result of it.

"What happened in Blackpool, Ruth?" he prompted her gently.

Her eyes snapped back to his face. "We stayed there for a week," she said, watching him carefully all the while. "He was always kind to me, Harry, and we really did think our parents were going to break up."

"But they didn't?" he supplied.

Ruth's mouth quirked up into a rueful almost-smile. "No. When we came home my mother was furious. I've never seen her so angry in all my life. But they wouldn't break up. I went to Oxford in September, and I never came back."

 _But what about the baby, Ruth?_ He wanted to ask. He wanted, very much, to hear the rest of the story, but Ruth was, as ever, vacillating; she seemed to him to be right on the very edge of falling apart entirely. Her hand trembled as she placed her glass on the table, and then wrapped her arms around herself. Her eyes were a little wild, refusing to light on any one thing, though she was now staunchly refusing to look him in the eye.

"Blackpool wasn't the only time it happened," she said finally.

Harry fought very hard to keep his surprise from showing. No wonder she'd been so hesitant, he realized; spending one mad week with Peter and then coming to her senses was one thing, but doing it again was something else entirely.

"I was young, Harry, and I was half in love with him. He came to see me at Oxford, and…he stayed with me, for a while. He was between jobs, and he wasn't getting on with his father. And then I found out I was pregnant."

There it was. So the child was Peter's, after all. It explained some things, to his mind, explained why she kept her heart so sheltered, why she did not readily share any piece of herself with another. To bear such a secret must have made her unwilling to trust anyone at all, lest they find out, and judge her for it.

"Peter wanted to… get rid of it, but I couldn't. We argued, and he left. I never saw him again," she confessed in a tiny voice.

Harry reached out and took her hand in his own, thinking that it was a good thing Peter Haig was dead; if the man were still alive, this man who had left Ruth all alone, eighteen years old and pregnant and estranged from her family, Harry would have killed him himself, would have made sure he answered for the pain he'd caused her.

"The baby didn't make it. I don't know why. I tried to tell myself it was for the best, but I still can't help but think…that's the closest I'd ever been to having a family of my own."

The sorrow in her voice was more than he could bear; Harry stood, and pulled Ruth to her feet and into his arms. She buried her face against his chest, and began to weep.

"It's all right, Ruth," he murmured. "It's all right."

He ran his hands up and down her back, trying to soothe her, trying to let her know without words that he loved her, that he was here for her, that her secret would not send him running.

It was strange, really; whoever had sent those photos had surely intended to tear them asunder, but facing the grim reality of their pasts had only served to make him feel closer to her than ever before. In the morning they would worry about the implications, the hows and the whys and the whos, but now he simply held her, and counted himself lucky for having such a woman to share his life and his bed.


	15. Chapter 15

The call could not have come at a more inopportune time. Ruth was lying on her stomach, her face buried in a crisp, clean hotel pillow, with Harry behind her, inside her, surrounding her. With his hands he held her hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise as he set a relentless pace that stole the breath from her lungs and left her defenseless in the onslaught.

"Ignore it," he all but growled, his voice a low, determined grumble, his breath whispering across the delicate shell of her ear and causing her to shudder involuntarily. As if to prove his point, his hand began to move, sliding determinedly across her hip, tracing a delicate pattern over the soft skin of her stomach before continuing on its journey until finally his fingertips brushed through her soaking curls and began to furiously rub her clit, sending her once more spiraling nearer the edge of oblivion. So complete was her abandon that she did not hear the phone ring again, though she knew it must have; she was too lost in Harry, in the sensations he caused, in the way he made her body sing, and for a few minutes, there was nothing in her world save Harry, Harry and the way he loved her, the way he filled her, the way he claimed her for his own.

It was only after, when he lay beside her, gasping and spent and smiling that self-satisfied little smile of his, that she recalled her mobile. Her limbs were heavy and loose and she was loath to move, but she knew that she must. Since her return from Cyprus, the only person who ever rung her to discuss something other than work was the man on whose naked chest she was currently resting her head. It seemed to Ruth that whatever the purpose for the call, it was sure to be important; still, though, she could not find it in her to regret ignoring it in favor of Harry's more pressing attentions. Perhaps she should have been cross with him, for the way that he had manipulated her, but she had enjoyed his efforts entirely too much to cast aspersions on him now. Gingerly she rolled away from him, and retrieved her mobile from the bedside table. Before she could even check to see who had rung her, Harry's strong arms encircled her, pulling her back down to the bed beside him, nestling her in close along his body.

"One of these days," he murmured, bending down to capture the lobe of her ear between his teeth and eliciting a whimper from deep in the back of her throat, "I'm going to teach you how to relax."

"That's rich, coming from you," she replied. She couldn't help herself; the novelty of sharing a bed with Harry hadn't quite worn off, and she could still feel his seed slowly drying on her inner thighs. Her mobile could wait for a moment, she decided, as she dropped it onto the bed behind her, and wound her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her for a thorough snog.

"Don't forget I've seen your medical reports," she teased him when they came up for air some time later. "If anyone needs to relax, Harry, it's you."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" he grumbled good-naturedly as his hands danced teasingly up and down the length of her spine. _Christ, but I love him,_ she thought fondly, leaning in to press a kiss against the soft skin of his throat. She loved him wholly, completely, without reservation, without recourse. Though for so long she had tried to deny it, all her doubts and all her fears had been washed away beneath the flood of her love for him. She loved the strength of his arms and the softness of his voice and the peace he brought to her amidst the chaos of their lives. She loved the way he knew her, loved the way their bodies fit together in sleep, and she loved knowing that he felt the same, that despite their many trials and tribulations, they had found their way to one another at last. It had been difficult, damn near impossible, to reveal to him not only her long-running indiscretion with Peter Haig, but the dream that had died with his child, the pain it brought her when she looked at her life and found it empty. Empty no longer, though; Ruth had long since accepted the fact that she would never have children of her own, but Harry had banished her loneliness, had given her a reason to hope that her future might be brighter than the years of misery that had preceded this night.

"Go on, then," he said, brushing a kiss against her temple. "I know you're eager to see who it was." With those words he rolled away from her, and sauntered off to the bathroom; Ruth indulged herself for a moment, following the progress of his naked body with hungry eyes, before returning her attentions once more to the discarded mobile.

She nearly laughed aloud; _of course_ it was bloody Tariq who had rung her, who had tried to interrupt her in the act of making love with Harry. The lad had an uncanny ability to turn up at the most inopportune times, and she found herself feeling rather relieved that she had not answered his call when it came in. She shuddered to think what she might have said to him, let alone what _Harry_ might have said, should such a thing have happened. Her mirth was short-lived, however; it was late, and the events of the evening washed over her once again, as she remembered why exactly she and Harry were hiding out in a hotel, and not his warm and comfortable home. With no small amount of trepidation, she dutifully called Tariq back.

"Ruth," he said when he answered the phone, and she fought the urge to sigh.

"What is it, Tariq?" she asked. As she spoke Harry reentered the room, and his brow furrowed as he heard Tariq's name. He slid into bed beside her and pulled her once more into his arms, and without a second thought, she switched the call to speaker, and held the mobile out in front of her so that they both could hear.

"I reviewed the photos you gave me. I'm still trying to de-encrypt the email, but it was a professional job. I might not ever be able to tell you where it originated."

Ruth's heart sank as the gravity of their situation burst the happy little bubble she and Harry had constructed for themselves in this dimly lit hotel room.

"And I've only been able to pull a few fingerprints off the other photographs, but I think we can be fairly certain those will be Harry's. Whoever did this was very careful."

"Do you have any good news for us?" Harry grumbled, though his face promptly paled, and he turned to Ruth with an apologetic expression on his face. For her part she simply reached out and gave his hand a reassuring little squeeze; Harry had just announced his presence beside Ruth, in the dead of night, and though in the morning she might wince, to think how awkward that revelation might make things for her at work, for now she was all too happy to have him sharing this bed and this moment with her.

There was a startled pause, and when Tariq answered, his voice was decidedly higher-pitched. "While I couldn't find any material evidence on the photographs, I decided maybe we could trace the images themselves. Ruth printed her pictures here on our machines, but Harry's were printed on photostock. The paper is old, and the coloring in the photographs is consistent with mid to late-twentieth century film. Based on Harry's apparent age in the photos, I'd say they were printed around the same they were taken, and stored somewhere for the intervening years."

"Hang on, Tariq," Ruth said. She muted the phone so Tariq could not hear her, and then turned to Harry, her mind whirring. "Harry-"

"Who would have been in a position to take photographs of Elena Gavrick and I thirty years ago?" he finished for her. He sighed, and rubbed his brow with his fingertips. "Jim Coaver, Ilya Gavrick, any number of British agents…including…" his voice trailed off, and his eyes hardened, the crinkles at their corners thrown into sharp relief by the dim light of the bedside lamp.

Ruth did not like that expression. That expression was bitter, and angry, and it frightened her.

"Harry?" she prompted him timidly. "What is it?"

"Oliver Mace, Juliet Shaw, and Jools Siviter were all bouncing in and out of Berlin around that time," he said shortly.

At those words, Ruth's world tilted on its access, and her stomach gave an almighty lurch as the remains of their supper threatened to make a reappearance. She still had nightmares about Oliver Mace, from time to time, his snide, sneering face swimming out of focus as he taunted her. And Juliet, Juliet bloody Shaw, the woman who had shared Harry's bed and his secrets, who had proven that she would stop at nothing to achieve her own ends, and damn anyone who stood in the way. Siviter she did not know so well, mercifully, but she knew that he was ruthless and cunning, and the thought that anyone from Six might be involved in a plot against her and Harry left her nearly paralyzed with fear. Why? To what end?

"Harry-" she gasped.

"There's no way to know if it was any of them," he said sharply, turning to her so that she might see the worry etched so deeply in his dear, sweet face. "Perhaps someone took the photos, and they ended up somewhere else entirely. Thirty years is a damn long time."

"But they're all masters at holding grudges, Harry, and they have reason to want to hurt you."

He harrumphed, shifting around uncomfortably on the bed beside her. "Well, it probably wasn't Juliet, she'll be arrested the moment she steps foot on British soil."

"She could have delivered the photographs to someone, though," Ruth pointed out, trying not to bristle at the thought of Harry defending his loathsome former paramour.

"Can we discuss this later? I'd rather not leave Tariq on hold all night," was all the reply Harry gave her.

Fighting valiantly not to roll her eyes, Ruth turned her attention once more to her mobile.

"Tariq?" she said.

"There's something else you should know," he continued breathlessly, as if he hadn't just spent several minutes in a lonely silence.

 _Christ, something else?_ Ruth wondered.

"The only way to retrieve the ultrasound photo would be to pull it from your medical records, Ruth. The clinic where the image was taken has shut down, and their records have been closed."

 _Who would have access to my records?_ She wondered. There was a fully copy on file at Thames House, she knew, but only a select few people had access to that information. Ruth herself couldn't get her hands on it – not legally, any way. She had told Harry the truth, she had snuck a look at his details. On more than one occasion.

"And,"

" _Christ,"_ Harry muttered.

Tariq persevered, undaunted by his boss's chagrin. "While I was waiting for the results of the tests on the photographs, I decided to do a little inventory. We're missing six bugs, and three micro-cameras."

 _Six bugs?_ Ruth thought in dismay. _We only found four, and no cameras at all._

Harry's face took on an expression that could best be described as murderous. "How the bloody hell-"

"I'm not supposed to do inventory for another two weeks, and everyone knows it. It's not uncommon for small bits of kit to walk off in between the monthly checks, but it's usually just trackers and the like, and it's never this many."

"One moment, Tariq," Harry said, and then he reached out, took the mobile from Ruth, and muted it once more.

"Someone could have taken the bugs, thinking they had plenty of time to return them before Tariq noticed," Ruth said, torn somewhere between horrified and bewildered. Whoever was behind this had access to MI-5 records, and Section D surveillance kit; it was looking more and more like an inside job with each passing second. But who? Why?

"I don't know, Ruth," Harry sighed, and she realized he was responding to her unspoken questions, and not to her words. "I don't know, but we have to keep this quiet. They can't know we're on to them."

"How could they not know, Harry? We swept the house, and we didn't find the cameras. They know we're suspicious, and they know we we're not staying the night in your house."

Harry snapped his fingers, and leapt out of bed, swearing. Before Ruth could ask what he was he doing, he began tossing her clothes at her in between trying to stuff himself into his own trousers.

"We have to get back to the house, now," Harry barked. "Tell Tariq to scramble a forensics team. The hell with discretion."

Ruth half-rose from her reclining position on the bed, worry churning her gut and leaving her breathless. "Harry-"

"They wanted us to be suspicious, Ruth. They wanted us to find those bugs, it was too easy. Someone wanted to get me out of my house. And I think I know why."


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: This chapter comes with a warning for some violence.**

* * *

An eerie, uncomfortable silence filled the backseat of the taxi where Harry and Ruth rode, squeezed in tight next to one another. They were not free to speak just now, not where they could so easily be overheard, and so they were left each to their own thoughts. Harry's were bleak, and furious, his whole body fairly vibrating with rage and with remorse. He had realized, the moment Ruth pointed out that they were hardly fooling their enemies by seeking shelter in the hotel, just how foolish he had been. It was foolish, not to press for more, not to pursue more doggedly the suspicion that had been niggling in the back of his mind for several days now.

It was such a small thing. A single, innocuous comment, just one more wasted breath in a string of idle chatter, but it had been rattling around inside his brain from the moment he first heard it. To be a good spy, men like Harry learned early on that no detail, however small, however banal, should go unexplored. Talk, whether it came from tongues loosened by cheap booze in seedy pubs or the dignified, self-serving natterings of politicians, always meant something. Sometimes all it meant was that the speaker, regardless of his birth or station, was looking to make himself appear bigger than he was. Sometimes talk was born of a desire to wound, regardless of the truth or falsity of the words themselves. And sometimes, sometimes that casual talk, those words uttered without pomp and without emphasis, were designed as a warning.

Harry had spent the last few days listening to an endless stream of chatter from the new Home Secretary. His mind had been dulled by the sheer abundance of the man's words, and he had fallen victim to his own daydreams, his thoughts turning towards Ruth, and away from the matter at hand. For what man would rather focus on the blustering of an up-jumped politician than on the beauty of his new lover, the warmth of her skin, the softness of her smile?

But the HS _had_ warned him.

It was such a little thing; the day before, in between prattling on about his nagging wife and meeting the PM, Towers had said, _I'll be going down to the Traveller's tomorrow evening, my old friend Oliver has invited me for a drink._

At the time, Harry had simply grunted and tapped his fingertips impatiently on his desk, waiting for the man to come to a bloody point, or leave him be to continue his perusal of his beloved's face. It was only tonight, after speaking with Ruth, after truly giving the problem at hand the consideration that it deserved, that he realized the latent threat behind those words, the potential for danger that lurked in the air.

Of course, there were likely several men named Oliver who belonged to that club, of which Harry himself was a member. He knew of two at least. There was only one Oliver, though, who was the sort to hobnob with the Home Secretary, one man who had long ago written a letter of recommendation suggesting that Harry was a prime candidate for membership. One man who knew how dear Ruth was to him, how tenuous was their connection, one man who knew Harry's secrets, and where he kept them.

Whispers had reached him, over the last few months, that Oliver Mace had been trying, with limited success, to bring himself back into good graces. There had been no jail time for Mace, though he had lost his position and his power. He had been declawed, but the man still had teeth, and his thirst for power, and for vengeance, was legendary.

It was a leap, Harry knew, but the business of spying was all about making leaps, making connections where there did not appear to be any, piecing together a puzzle whose pieces did not reveal their true colors or shapes until the final moment. A new Home Secretary, idle gossip about Mace's inevitable comeback, the photographs of Elena, the suggestion that perhaps whoever was tracking him had access to MI-5 records, a careless name dropped into a conversation about a private club; when taken all together, Harry knew how it looked.

If his suspicions were correct, it was at its heart a cunning plan. Separate Harry and Ruth, the only people still working for the Service who recalled the exact details of Mace's disgrace. Lure Harry away from his home just long enough for a thorough search to be conducted. Unearth the memoirs he kept hidden in his upstairs safe; the notebook written in Clive McTaggert's own hand, and the diary Harry himself had kept during his younger, less cautious years. If Mace could have severed the ties that bound Harry and Ruth, and then removed Harry from the picture, it would be easy enough for him to ingratiate himself with his old friend William Towers, and worm his way back into the heart of the Security Services. Without Harry's power, Ruth would have no way to stop him, no access to the Home Secretary's ear, and Mace's revenge would be complete. Harry would be at the very least removed from his post, if not jailed for his past offences, he would have no job, no lover, and no friends. Yes, it was cunning.

All of this was speculation, of course, but it was all that he had, and he felt a fearsome need to get home, and quickly. He needed to ascertain that the books were still there, tucked away safely, and then he needed to give serious consideration to burning them. And once that was done, he needed to march straight up to William Towers with Ruth in tow, and lay out the whole sordid story, from Berlin to now, every moment of Mace's treachery. Impatience threatened to burn him alive, and not even Ruth's steady presence by his side was enough to calm him.

When they arrived at his home, the street was as it should have been, cloaked in darkness, no one stirring at this late hour. Ruth leaned into his side, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered to him that Tariq and his team were still a few minutes out. Harry knew what she was trying to say, the words that did not pass her lips; _be patient, Harry_ , her whole attitude seemed to murmur. _Don't do anything rash._

Ordinarily, he would have heeded her advice. He would have lingered, would have asked the taxi driver to drop him several streets away, and wait there in the cold, stamping his feet until the cavalry arrived. Tonight, however, he was too cross with himself, too disappointed that he had been distracted by his love of her, and failed to see what dangers lurked in the shadows, waiting for him to drop his guard, even for a moment. He had played right into Mace's hands, lured into insensibility by the siren song of Ruth's body, by the merciless heat between her legs and his desperate, soul-crushing need of her. It wasn't her fault, and he did not blame her for it; he blamed himself, for losing sight of his own responsibilities, for painting a target on both their backs.

In response to her quiet whisper he only grunted, and paid the taxi driver before stepping from the car. He helped Ruth out, and drew her into his arms for a moment, his eyes on his house all the while.

"Walk down to the corner," he told her in a quiet voice. "Find somewhere dark and out of the way, and wait for Tariq."

Ruth clutched him fiercely and shook her head, her hair tickling his chin. "Absolutely not, Harry. You can't go in there. You have no idea what's waiting for you there."

"I have to, Ruth," he answered her, though the fear in her voice nearly stopped his heart and shattered his resolve. _That's what you got into this mess in the first place,_ he told himself crossly. He had to go in, and now, rescue his secrets before the techies arrived and tore the place apart. The fewer questions asked of him, the fewer lies he would have to tell, and he preferred that no hands save his touch the books so reverently stored in his house.

"Then I'm going in with you," she said firmly, taking a step back to look up into his eyes. She was beautiful, and stubborn, as unyielding as the sun. "You don't have to do everything by yourself, Harry."

 _Oh,_ how he wanted to believe her. Hope had filled him, had made him reckless, had sent him into a jeweler's shop on a mission to purchase the ring that now nestled on her left hand, and that hope had been born of the belief that perhaps he did not have to spend the rest of his days in isolation. He had brought her into his bed, into his heart, because he believed she was strong enough, brave enough to stand beside him, and though he longed to protect her, he knew that he needed her with him, always.

"All right," he conceded, though the words nearly choked him. "But you stay behind me."

She nodded her assent, and they turned together to enter his home once more.

It was eerily silent, inside his house; though he had set the alarm upon exiting earlier in the evening, it gave no sound as the door opened. All was in darkness; even the digital clock on the little table in his front hall had gone out. There was no hum of the television or refrigerator; blackness covered everything beyond a small semi-circle by the window where light streamed in from the streetlamps outside.

Slowly, Harry made his way through his home, Ruth following close on his heels. Everywhere he looked Harry saw devastation; the sofa cushions had been slashed with a knife, every book had been torn from the shelves, and paper carpeted the floor everywhere he turned. Someone had been here, recently, looking for something. It seemed to him to be the justification of all his suspicions, but he took no pleasure in it.

The downstairs appeared to be deserted; there was no sign of Scarlet, whom they had left resting peacefully in her little basket in the kitchen, and this alarmed Harry more than anything else about the scene before him. They would have to make their way upstairs, much as the thought daunted him; the upstairs of his home was a trap, with only one clear means of escape, and he knew it. If anyone were waiting for them there, he and Ruth would have only seconds to defend themselves, or face calamity. He desperately wanted her to wait outside, but one look at her face told him that she was resolved to stand with him, whatever fate awaited them. With his heart in his throat, he began to climb the stairs, taking care with where he placed his feet, making not a sound.

The first room off the landing was the guest room; a cursory glance through the door showed that this room, like the downstairs, had been thoroughly demolished, but he saw no signs of life, and continued on his way.

This was a terrible error.

No sooner had Harry passed that door by then a shadow slipped out from behind it, previously hidden from view; a single, creaking floorboard was all the warning Harry had. He spun on his heel, instinctively lunging towards Ruth, wanting to protect her, but he was too late. The shadow held a gun, and he fired it at the first person he saw.

There was a moment, a single, horrible moment, when Harry saw Ruth's body convulse at the impact of the bullet striking her chest. Her whole body seemed to arc, her face pale, her mouth frozen in an _O_ of shock, and then she was falling, tumbling down the stairs before Harry could stop her. She had only just reached the landing, and her feet weren't steady under her when the bullet ripped through her, and she lost her balance completely, slipping away from him.

Harry had been in the act of reaching for her, and the momentum of his body carried him forward, and he crashed into the shadow as a fury such as he had never known before utterly consumed him. Though the moment of Ruth's wounding had seemed to last an eternity, time sped up as he pummeled his attacker with his fists, desperately seeking access to the gun while also trying with all his might to cause as much damage as possible to this shadow, this demon who had dared to hurt his dearest love, who had ripped the heart from his chest and flung it away without a second thought. Beneath his hands, his attacker was momentarily stunned, paralyzed by the ferocity of Harry's reaction, but he quickly recovered. The man was taller and more muscular than Harry, and once he got his bearings, the tide of their deadly fight turned quickly. Harry took a knee to the gut and, winded, found himself thrown to the side; in that instant, as his whole body protested at the movement, he saw an opening, and he took it, gouging his left thumb into the shadow's eye even as he lunged for the gun. The shadow screamed, Harry took hold of the gun, and he fired five shots straight up, into the man's chest.

The body rolled away from him, dead as a post, and Harry dragged himself to his feet, struggling for breath, one of his fingers broken, blood streaming into his eyes from a cut on his brown, clouding his vision. It was only then that Harry saw the face of the man he had killed, and he very nearly collapsed once more; it was Lucas North whose body lay mangled and broken on his upstairs landing.

There was no time for Harry to contemplate this horror; Ruth, his darling Ruth, was lying at the foot of the stairs, and he had to go to her. He ran, or as near to that as he could manage, down the stairs, and found her crumpled in a heap at the bottom, blood pouring from her wound, her eyes closed and her breathing erratic. Harry tore off his shirt and pressed it tight against her, moving her gently so that her head rested in his lap. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and rang for an ambulance, and only then did he allow the gravity of the situation to sink into him.

"Ruth," he whispered in a broken voice. "My Ruth. Don't go. Don't leave me." Gently he touched her face, brushing her hair back from her eyes with his free hand, while with the other he did his best to staunch the flow of blood from her wound. Just an hour before, she had been lying naked and warm and blessedly alive beside him in a hotel bed, and now…now he could feel her life slipping through his fingers, and nothing he could do to stop it. " _Don't leave me,"_ he begged her.

Tariq arrived perhaps a minute later; he was the second person to cross the threshold, behind a heavily armed CO-19 officer. For all the rest of his days, the young man would never forget the sight that greeted him on that night; Harry, shirtless, sitting on the floor with his beloved's head resting in his lap, her eyes closed, both of their hands splattered with blood. It as quite the most horrific thing he had ever seen.


	17. Chapter 17

"We found Scarlet hiding under the bed upstairs," Tariq was saying. "I've taken her back to the Grid with me, so you don't have to worry about her."

"Thank you, Tariq," Harry said earnestly, rubbing a weary hand across his brow while with the other he held his mobile pressed against his ear. He was waiting in a nondescript hospital hallway, sprawled across a hard plastic chair where he had been for the last two hours since the ambulance had delivered Ruth, still wrapped in his bloody, ruined shirt, still entirely unresponsive. In that time he'd spoken to one haggard looking nurse, who provided him with no details, and very little comfort. The longer he sat, the more he fretted; though he was grateful to Tariq, for looking after his little dog, he had no desire to continue this phone call, to listen to the mundane details of the world outside the little surgery where his whole life hung in the balance.

"Harry, I know you don't want to hear this," the lad continued, with genuine regret in his voice. Harry tried not to sigh; they'd lost Ros, and now Lucas and Ruth as well, leaving their Section critically understaffed, and he knew that as much as he might resent it, certain things would be expected of him in the coming days. He wanted to say _bugger the lot of you. My Ruth is in that room, fighting for her life, and you expect me to care about protocol?_

"I've had a call from Dimitri."

"Tariq, surely there's someone else-"

"Do you really want me ringing the DG, Harry? Right now, I don't know who else could possibly-"

"All right." This time, Harry did sigh. What did it matter, he asked himself, if this particular op failed? What did it matter, when Ruth was ensconced in the room behind him, fighting for her life? He knew which battle concerned him more immediately, and he found he had very little patience for his job and his responsibilities, just now. He would happily throw them all away, let the world burn down around him, just to see Ruth safe and well again. He had long ago washed her blood from his hands, but he could still feel it there, could still feel the weight of his guilt; he should have made her stay outside, he should have stayed outside with her, he should have waited, he should have been faster, he should have _saved_ her. But he hadn't, and it seemed to him that his life's work would be for naught, if he could not protect the woman he loved more than his own life.

"When Lucas didn't show, Dimitri went to plan B."

"Which is?"

"He disabled the ship, and called in an anonymous tip to the Moroccan authorities, saying that there was a shipment of drugs on board. Then he jumped off the side, and swam away. The ship and everyone on it will be held for the next few hours, and Abib has been taken into custody; apparently the Moroccans wanted him almost as badly as we did. Dimitri wants to know what to do next."

All in all, Harry supposed that wasn't the worst result he could have expected, and he found he was actually feeling a bit relieved, to know that Abib would not have a chance to loose whatever horror he had planned. He would prefer to know that the man was dead, but he supposed a few months in a Moroccan jail might just take care of that issue for him. They would all live to fight another day. All of them, except Lucas.

 _Lucas. It doesn't make any bloody sense._

"Bring him home, Tariq. We need him now, more than ever."

"That's the thing, Harry. He's picked up a mercenary, a private contractor by the name of Beth Bailey. She says she wants to come back with him."

The name twigged something in Harry's mind, a hazy memory from long ago. _Beth Bailey…_ where had he heard that name before?

"If she wants to come home, she'll have to make her own way. We don't have time to go looking after strays," Harry decided.

"I'll get Dimitri on the first flight home," Tariq agreed. There was a long, rather awkward pause here; Harry could almost see the young man shifting uncomfortably in his seat, but Tariq made no move to speak, and Harry was in no mood for playing games.

"If that's all-"

"I've pulled Lucas's call logs," he said quietly.

At those words, Harry felt his heart rate skyrocket, felt the rage and the bile bubbling up in the back of his throat. _Damn him, and damn me for killing him before we got the chance to interrogate him. The bastard._

"And?" he demanded.

"There's a lot of suspicious activity. Calls to untraceable numbers. I'm digging through his internet history as well, but I think it's safe to say that whatever he was doing, he wasn't acting alone. Someone else is out there, pulling the strings."

As Tariq spoke Harry happened to look up, and what he saw made him, if possible, even angrier. William Towers was slowly plodding down the hall towards him with a contrite look on his face. The last bloody thing Harry needed right now was to go ten rounds with a politician of dubious intent, but it seemed that fate was not inclined to be merciful to him today.

"Find them," he growled into the phone. "Ring me as soon as you know something." And with that, he ended the call, and tucked his mobile into his trouser pocket. And when he did, he found something else, something he'd almost forgotten was there. Absently he plucked Ruth's engagement ring from his pocket, worrying it between the fingers of his left hand without even realizing what he had done.

By this time Towers had reached him, and his nerves had reached their breaking point. He forced himself to stand and offer his hand to the HS, though he longed to wrap that hand around the odious man's throat instead.

"Home Secretary," he said, grinding the words out from behind clenched teeth. "Please, forgive my…current state of dress," he added, plucking at the gray hospital scrubs he wore for a shirt.

Towers waved his hand dismissively. "That's the last thing you need to worry about just now, Harry," he said gravely as the pair of them sat together, side-by-side on those wretched chairs. "I'm terribly sorry to hear about Miss Evershed," he added, groaning slightly as he leaned back in his chair. The chair let out a small, sad squeak of protest at his bulk, but it held. "I understand she's a vital part of your team."

Harry found he could not speak. He bowed his head, his tongue thick and ungainly in his mouth, and watched the sparkle of Ruth's ring, spinning endlessly between his fingertips.

"What have you got there?" Towers asked. It was strange, really, considering Harry's suspicions regarding the man and the role he might have played in tonight's catastrophe, but it seemed to Harry that the HS's voice had taken on a gentle, kindly sort of tone.

"It's Ruth's engagement ring," Harry explained. "Apparently, jewelry's not allowed in the surgery, in case they have to…" his voice trailed off; he didn't want to consider that. Didn't want to consider what might happen if Ruth's heart stopped beating, if they had to shock her with a defibrillator, if their attempts to revive her were not enough. The nurse had brought the ring out to him, shortly after they wheeled Ruth away from his side. The nurse had told him, not unkindly, that there was nothing he could do but wait and hope, and Harry had nearly laughed bitterly in her face. _Hope is what got me into this mess. If it weren't for hope, she never would have been in my house tonight._

"Christ," Towers said sadly. He lifted his head and looked around, as if searching for something. "Where is her fiancé? Has someone contacted the poor sod? He must be worried sick about her."

"He is," Harry confessed sadly. _Sick to death with worry, and with shame. Oh Ruth, my Ruth, what have I done?_

Towers gave him a shrewd sort of look. "I see. Well then, I'm doubly sorry, Harry. I can't imagine what you must be feeling."

 _No you can't, can you? Can't imagine the destruction you've caused. Can't imagine the horror you've unleashed on me. On her._

For a moment they sat in silence, Harry stewing in his anger and his doubt, Towers rolling his shoulders and looking around interestedly, as if he'd never spent time in a hospital before. The man's attitude was rather blasé, as if he found the whole thing a bit of a lark, and with each passing second Harry found his self-restraint losing out to his desire to get to the bottom of this horror, and find the person responsible. He turned to Towers, studying him for a moment, wondering if now was the time to press.

"I have to ask you something," Harry said finally. Towers turned, giving Harry his full attention. "What is your connection to Oliver Mace?"

Towers smiled, and Harry very nearly punched him in the teeth.

"I've been wondering when you were going to ask me that, Harry," he said. "I thought surely you would have brought it up before now."

"I've been a bit preoccupied," Harry snapped in reply. For his part Towers did not blanche, nor did his demeanor change in the slightest.

"I was at school with Mace. Slimy toad that he is," he added.

 _I don't have time for these games,_ Harry thought grimly. He needed answers, he needed vengeance, and he needed Ruth, safe and well and whole, tucked up in his bed where she belonged.

"He's been trying for days now to secure a meeting with me. I think he believes that our previous connection will be sufficient to buy him a few minutes of my time."

"But you don't believe so, do you?" Harry asked. He found no reason to doubt the sincerity of Towers's apparent dislike of Mace, but he had only a few hours before shot one of his best agents in his own home, a man he would have sworn he knew, sworn he could trust. Harry did not have much faith in his own perception of other people's intentions, just now.

"I'm not familiar with how Oliver came to find himself out in the cold, which is why I tried to discuss the matter with you in our last conversation. I don't wish to speak to him, and I don't wish to grant him so much as a toehold of power until I understand the full situation."

"He's a liar, and a traitor, and if I ever see him again, I'll kill him myself," Harry said, forgetting for a moment to whom he was speaking. Towers appeared a bit shocked at that pronouncement, but a bit impressed, too, as if he had taken one look at Harry and understood just how serious this threat was. Harry was a man who had killed before and would, in this instance, gladly do it again, and Towers seemed, if anything, to admire that about him. _The world has gone mad,_ Harry thought.

"Yes, I believe you would," Towers said. "Do you think Mace is involved in what happened at your home this evening?" he asked. It was rather clever of him, Harry thought, to put all together so quickly; perhaps he ought to give the man more credit. At first blush he appeared to be all bluster and pomposity, but now it seemed to Harry that beneath that civil veneer was a mind at work. He knew that he must tread carefully. He felt as if he were drowning, lost at the bottom of some vast sea with no notion of which way was up. He needed Ruth, to steady him, to guide him, to lead him home, but she was not there, and he was hopeless without her.

"It's all circumstantial, at this point," Harry confessed, "but he is one of a very select number of people who could have orchestrated this. He has access to…certain information, and he knows…" _he knows how much Ruth means to me._ "He knows that his surest way back to power is to remove me from the equation."

Towers hummed a bit at that. "Are you going to bring him in?" he asked.

This presented a bit of a problem for Harry; though Tariq was no doubt working tirelessly to get to the bottom of Lucas's treachery, he had no justifiable reasons for having Mace arrested and dragged into Thames House, and he had no doubt that the man would disappear into the ether the moment he sensed trouble. With a start Harry realized that he had been so busy worrying about Ruth that he had not taken the time to retrieve the books from his safe, or even to ascertain that they were still there. All around him the game of spies played on, but he was frozen, paralyzed by grief and fear, unable to make his own move until he was certain that Ruth was safe.

"Not at this time, no," Harry said.

"Shame," Towers told him, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. "I'd like to see that man left to rot at Her Majesty's Pleasure for all the rest of his days."

 _I'd like to see him dead, so that he can haunt me no longer,_ Harry thought.

Though they had both of them run out of things to say, they continued to sit together. Towers did not check his watch, or faff about on his mobile; he sat still and calm, as if he were perfectly content to wait alongside Harry for the duration of his terrible vigil. If he could be trusted, if he was genuinely in this place out of a concern for Harry, then the gesture seemed to be a kind one. As it was, Harry had no way to know why the man had chosen to linger, and his continued presence chafed at Harry's raw and bleeding soul.

* * *

Two more hours passed, and still Harry received no word about Ruth's condition. He had tucked her ring safely away in the pocket of his trousers, not wanting to invite more curiosity into his personal life from Towers, who was still there beside him, though now he was clutching a paper cup full of tea in his hands. He had offered to fetch one for Harry, but Harry had declined; he could not think of food or drink, could think of nothing save Ruth's pale face, and the steady stream of her blood spilling out from between his fingers.

His mobile rang; though he wanted nothing so much as to throw the offending device against the wall and smash it into a thousand tiny pieces, he resisted the temptation, and answered the call.

"Harry, it's Tariq." The young man was breathless, but he sounded, if anything, pleased with himself.

"What have you found?" Harry did not have time for the niceties, just now.

"I've confirmed that Lucas is the one who stole the kit we found in your house," Tariq began. Harry wanted to shout at him _of course he was, you bloody idiot,_ but he held his tongue.

"And he used a small electromagnetic pulse to break into your house. It disabled all of the electronics, including your alarm system."

That explained the eerie darkness that had greeted Harry when he arrived earlier in the night, but it brought him no closer to discovering who was behind the terrible events of the last few days.

"Tariq-"

"There's more. All of Lucas's kit was still in your house, including the device he used to disable the alarm, and a burner phone. The phone was bought today, and I managed to find CCTV footage of the person who purchased it. I've texted a photo to your mobile."

Harry turned his attentions to retrieving the photo, his hands trembling as he pressed the buttons.

There on the screen was a grainy black and white image of Oliver Mace.

"Thank you, Tariq," Harry said, his voice shaking as badly as his hands had been. "I'll be in touch." He ended the call, and once more turned his attention to the Home Secretary.

"Everything all right, Harry?" the man asked him.

"I was wondering if you could do me a favor," Harry replied.

* * *

It was all settled; Towers had called Mace and asked him to meet for a drink, and Tariq had arranged for CO-19 to be ready to pick him the moment he showed his face. Harry hoped it would be enough, that Mace had not yet learned that Lucas was dead, and that his ambition would not permit him to pass up the opportunity to lick the Home Secretary's boots. For his part, Towers had seemed very nearly giddy at the prospect of trying his hand at spycraft. Harry had called in a favor with Six, bringing in a team to help with the clean up, and deal with interrogating Mace. It was the best he could hope for, under the circumstances; he had no team, and no time, and he was not willing to leave the hospital.

He could not leave, not until he saw Ruth, until he could hold her in his arms again, until he knew for a certainty that his love had not damned her. This was his greatest fear, realized, that the sins of his past would visit his present, that a reckoning would come, and the price for his misdeeds would be too high to pay. She was so lovely, was Ruth, so good and kind and so terribly sad, and they had been given so little time; they had only been engaged for a few days, a few blessed, beautiful, shining days in which she had been happy, and he had been stunned into near insensibility by her radiance. Life without her didn't bear thinking about; it seemed to Harry that should she be taken from him, he would surely waste away to nothing, would cease to live at all, without her there by his side.

Finally, after many hours and much self-recrimination, the same weary nurse made her way out of the surgery, and came to sit beside him.


	18. Chapter 18

"She's a fighter, your Ruth," the nurse said, letting loose a bone-deep sigh as she stretched her long legs out in front of her and rested her head against the wall behind them. Her eyes were closed, exhaustion radiating from her; Harry had thought he was tired, but he had spent the long dark hours of the night sitting in a chair while the nurse had been on her feet, assisting with the surgery. He felt an odd sort of sympathy for her, this tired woman who had worked so hard to save Ruth's life. There were many questions still to be asked and answered, but Harry did not harass the nurse; she would tell him in good time. While he waited, his hand slipped into his pocket, and he wrapped his fingers around Ruth's ring once again. That ring was precious to him, not because of the money he had paid for it, but because of the hope and the joy it had brought him, the promise it held for his future.

"We nearly lost her."

Harry's heart constricted at those words, though he dare not speak. The thought of Ruth lying on a hospital bed, her chest cracked open, her heart stuttering to a halt, was enough to make him nearly sick with guilt and grief and fear for her, and he dare not dwell too long on it, lest he go completely mad.

"She came back though. Seems to me she's got something worth living for." As she spoke, the nurse cracked open one bleary eye, and surveyed Harry coolly from beneath her thick eyelashes. For his part, Harry nearly wept with relief; he covered his face with his hands for a moment, rubbing his fingertips across his dry, scratchy eyes, thinking only of Ruth, the beauty of her smile, the warm honeyed sound of her voice, the softness of her skin. She had not left him, his Ruth. She had fought to stay here, with him, and he was so bloody grateful.

"Lucky, too," the nurse continued. "The bullet missed all her major organs. It took us a while to find it and stop the bleeding, but she's resting now."

"Thank you," Harry breathed, hardly trusting himself to say anything more, knowing that no words could convey the depth of his gratitude. He had very nearly lost Ruth, very nearly lost everything, very nearly forfeited his one chance at happiness, and he could not understand how it was that Ruth had been spared. Death and darkness had surrounded him for so long that he had come to expect it in a way, had come to believe that every good and true thing in his life must eventually be spoiled, soiled by the things he had done, the things he had seen. His marriage to Jane, his relationship with his children, countless friends; all of these things he had sacrificed, but he could not have borne it, should Ruth be taken from him as well. He was too old, too tired, infinitely wiser than he had been when his feet first carried him down this path, and he was determined not to make the same mistakes again.

"They're taking her back to a private room now," the nurse told him, reaching out and giving his forearm a reassuring little squeeze. "Technically, we're not supposed to let anyone back there just now, but if you promise to be very quiet, I think we can sneak you in. What do you say?"

"I would like that, very much," he told her earnestly. The nurse just smiled, and with a start Harry realized how very young she was; she looked to be hardly older than Catherine, with the same fair hair. It shocked him, to think that someone so young could hold so much in her hands, but then he reminded himself as he rose and followed the nurse down the hall that everyone looked young to him these days. The older he got, the more it seemed to him that he was surrounded by people entirely too young to be trusted with such responsibility, when the truth was that he had been young himself, when he first began to serve his country, when he first began to kill and lie and fight his dogged, never ending fight. His colleagues weren't getting younger; he was getting older, and more tired by the day.

The nurse ushered him into Ruth's private room, and helped him move the heavy chair from the corner of the room to Ruth's bedside.

"When will she wake up?" he asked in a voice no more than a whisper, his eyes riveted to Ruth's face, the pale translucence of her skin, the many wires and tubes connected to her slight frame.

"When she's ready," the nurse answered. It was vague, but Harry had spent enough time in hospitals to know what the nurse meant. After a procedure like that, nothing was guaranteed, and the doctors and nurses weren't in the habit of making promises to family members. "Try to get some rest, love," she said as Harry slouched heavily into the chair. "I'll be back to check on her in a bit."

And with that she left them alone, Harry and his Ruth.

He reached out and gently took her hand in his, feeling the delicate bones beneath her soft skin, his fingertips searching almost of their own accord until they found the feeble thrumming of her pulse. She was still here, she was still with him, and in that moment he swore he would do everything, anything, just to keep her safe and well for all the rest of his days. He reached into his pocket, and retrieved her ring, carefully sliding it onto his finger before the weight of everything that had happened over the last twelve hours became too much to bear, and he collapsed beside her, his head resting on the mattress, his hands still wrapped firmly around her own. There in the peaceful stillness of her hospital room, he shattered, and wept, until sleep claimed him.

* * *

"Sir Harry. Sir Harry."

He had been dreaming, dreaming about the first night he took Ruth to bed. He wasn't dreaming about how it felt to thrust himself inside her, or the look on her face when she was came; he was dreaming about what came after, about how _right_ she had felt, nestled in his arms, the way she had smiled at him in the predawn light the next morning. That moment was everything to him, for it held within it all the promise of a future with this woman, the hope that they had finally made their way past the rocky shoals that threatened to capsize them, and found their way to shore, together.

"Sir Harry." That gentle voice was too insistent to be denied, and so, despite the protesting of his weary limbs and his weary soul, Harry raised his head, and opened his eyes.

It was the same nurse who had tended to Ruth the night before. She looked as if she'd had a bit of rest herself; at the very least, she'd changed her scrubs. Cheery sunlight was streaming in through the window in the corner of the room, and as Harry stretched his body, discovering the myriad aches and pains left from sleeping crouched over in the hospital chair, his stomach gave a fearsome growl.

"There's someone here to see you," she said.

 _I don't need to see anyone but her,_ he thought, his eyes running over Ruth once more, ascertaining that all was well, though she was still sleeping. The nurse followed his gaze, and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips when she noticed that Harry had returned Ruth's ring to its rightful place.

"It's the Home Secretary," she added, her voice equal parts amusement and curiosity.

"Christ," Harry sighed. "Not here. I'll meet him outside."

"As you like," she said, shrugging. That curiosity remained, though, not that Harry could blame her; he was a curious sort himself, and he was sure that this entire episode would make for an interesting story for her to tell at her next dinner party.

Out in the hall, Towers was waiting, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet like an overgrown child. He beamed at Harry when he saw him.

"How's the patient?" he asked, reaching out to shake Harry's hand.

"As well as can be expected, thank you," Harry replied.

"I stopped by Thames House this morning, and spoke with a young man called Tariq Masood. He asked that I bring you this." With a grunt, Towers bent, and retrieved a small holdhall that was resting on the floor by his feet. "I believe it's clothes, for the both of you."

"Thank you," Harry repeated as he reached out and took the bag. He wasn't sure what else to say; he found that he wanted nothing so much as to return to Ruth's beside, and forget the world beyond these four walls. They could all go hang; Harry had lost his desire to continue the fight. That realization came as a bit of a surprise to him; always before he had picked himself up off the floor, and returned to his desk, chin held high. This time, though, it seemed to him that he had found something more important to him than his job, something that made him consider, for perhaps the first time, throwing in the towel, and washing his hands of the whole sorry business.

"I checked in on the Oliver Mace situation. Those boys from Six are quite good, but it seems that Mace is refusing to speak to anyone but you." Towers gave him a calculating sort of look, as if wondering once more what the history was between the pair of them.

"Home Secretary-" Harry started to protest, but Towers cut him off sharply.

"He's perilously close to walking free. If we don't get some sort of information out of him, and soon, we'll lose our chance here. We need to know what this is about, Harry, and how he managed to get to Lucas North."

Harry bit off the sharp retort that very nearly slipped past his lips; though he resented Tower's officious manner, and though the very thought of leaving Ruth's beside made him nearly frantic with worry for her, he knew he had little choice in the matter. He needed to keep her safe, and the only way to do that was to ensure that no more threats to her life lurked out there in the darkness. He needed Mace's story, in all its gory detail.

"I will speak to him," Harry said at last, resigned to his fate.

"Good man," Towers said, clapping him jovially on the shoulder. "You can use my driver, he's waiting downstairs. I'll stay here, and keep an eye on Miss Evershed until you return."

 _And why would you do that?_ Harry wondered. Perhaps the question showed on his face, because Towers continued in a sheepish tone of voice. "It's the least I could do, Harry. I know you don't want to leave her."

 _No, I bloody well don't._

Harry just nodded, and retreated into her room, changing into the fresh clothes Tariq had sent for him before leaning over, and dropping a gentle kiss on Ruth's cheek. "I'll be back before you know it," he promised.

* * *

Mace had not changed much in the years since Harry had last seen him. He was still slimy, with a grossly sensual mouth and beady eyes that reminded Harry of nothing so much as a toad. At this moment he was sitting in a holding cell deep in the bowels of Thames House, his hands and feet cuffed together. Despite the obvious power disparity his expression was still haughty, and he was gazing around the room as if he were bored, his eyes flicking every now and again to the two-way glass that took up most of one wall. To Mace it was only a mirror but to Harry, standing in the hall outside, it was a window with a very grim view.

"He's refusing to speak, sir, and we're not authorized to use…advanced interrogation measures," the young man from Six explained apologetically.

"It's quite all right," Harry reassured him as he absently adjusted his tie. "I'm going to speak to him. Listen to me very carefully. I assure you, this man is not in any danger. Do not, for any reason, come into this room, do you understand?"

The young man looked at him blankly, fear hovering in his bright eyes.

"You may hear some alarming things, but I need your word that you will not interrupt this meeting."

"It's your room," the young man said finally, giving a little shrug of his shoulders as if to say _on your head be it._

Harry thanked him, and for the first time in four years, he stepped into a room with Oliver Mace.

"Harry. I was wondering when you might turn up," Oliver sneered at him. "I'd shake your hand, but-" he raised his hands, showing off the cuffs that bound his wrists together.

Harry did not speak. He simply paced, walking slowly back and forth in front of the mirror. This was a performance, like many he had given in the past, and it would need to be played just so. He needed Oliver to believe him, needed the man to hang on his every word.

"I thought you came here to talk," Mace said after a few more moments in which Harry continued on in a brooding silence. Silence had always unnerved Oliver Mace, Harry knew; the idea that he wasn't holding all the cards was intolerable to him.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Harry asked, his voice deadly quiet as he turned on his heel to face this man, this man who had once been, if not his friend, then at the very least his ally. How quickly things change.

"Harry-"

Before Mace could speak another word Harry was on him; with an almighty swing, he punched Mace square in the face, and the man toppled to the ground, chair and all. Carefully, Harry covered Mace's throat with his shoe, and pressed down.

"He killed her, Oliver. You sent Lucas North to my home with a gun, and he killed Ruth. Look at my face!" This last he added as a shout, applying more pressure with his foot while Mace writhed on the floor beneath him. There was fear in Oliver Mace's eyes, and Harry was glad to see it. Fear he could work with.

"It wasn't my doing, Harry," Mace said, trying to placate him. Harry was having none of it.

"Look around you, Oliver," he said softly. "This is the room in which you are going to die." _Look around you, Harry,_ Mani had said to him once. _This is the room in which you are about to die._ And wasn't that odd, he thought, that those words had come to him now. With them came a flood of bitter memories, and the recollection of Ruth's face, pale and scared.

"Harry-"

"You killed her, Oliver. As if you hadn't already caused enough damage. No one is coming to save you now. Who would want to?"

Mace's reptilian eyes were darting back and forth wildly, sweating beading on his upper lip as the realization that Harry meant every word he was saying slowly began to sink in.

"I never meant for any harm to come to the girl," he said. This was a sight Harry had seen before, and one he knew well; the sight of a man pleading for his life. It turned Harry's stomach but still, he persisted.

"It doesn't matter what you _meant_ , Oliver. You took her away from me. And you will pay for that."

"Harry-"

"I still have questions," Harry continued in that same soft voice, that voice devoid of emotion. Before he entered the room, he asked himself how he could possibly make Mace believe that his life was about to end, and this little ploy had come to him. If Ruth _had_ died, if she really had been torn away from him as a result of Mace's machinations, there was no doubt in his mind that this man's life would be forfeit. As he spoke he imagined in his mind that he had truly lost her, and he let that grief guide him.

"Why should I tell you anything, if you're just going to kill me anyway?"

Mace was playing right into his hands, but Harry took no joy in it.

"Because you have a choice, Oliver. If you tell me the truth, I promise, I will kill you quickly. If you don't…" he let his voice fade away into nothing, let the threat take hold in the back of Mace's mind. No words Harry could have said would be more terrifying than the things this man could imagine unprompted, and Harry knew it. Better to let Mace frighten himself, than to waste energy with a big show of force.

It took a long time for Mace to come up with a response. He swallowed hard, the toe of Harry's shoe bobbing up in down in time to the movement of his Adam's apple. Harry saw it though, saw the moment when Mace realized that Harry was deadly serious, and all hope was lost "You promise it will be quick?"

Those words brought Nicholas Blake to mind. _Will it hurt?_ He'd asked, the moment he realized that death was coming for him. All men are the same, Harry mused. When the end came, all they ever wanted was a little dignity, and very little pain.

"One round to the back of the head. You'll never feel a thing."

"You won't get away with this."

"Ruth is gone, Oliver. What does it matter to me, if they send me to prison? I have nothing left to live for."

Mace nodded, and Harry bent over, heaving the man and his chair upright so that Oliver was once more sitting at the table. Harry took a seat across from him, and waited for him to speak.

"The first thing I suppose you should know is that Lucas North was not Lucas North."

 _What fresh hell is this?_ Harry knew better than to speak; Mace had started talking, and he needed to be allowed as much time as was required for him to lay out his tale in full.

"The real Lucas North was killed in Dakar, shortly after the embassy bombing. You remember Dakar, don't you, Harry?"

Harry's expression grew, if possible, even grimmer. Of course he remembered. Mace swallowed, and continued. "A man called John Bateman carried the bomb into the embassy, then killed Lucas North and used his passport to escape that country. I intercepted Bateman when he arrived at Thames House, claiming to be North. We struck a deal. In exchange for the names of those responsible for the Dakar bombing, I allowed him to keep the Lucas North identity, on the understanding that I would be watching him very closely. And for the next few years, you had a model agent on your hands."

This whole session was being recorded so that Harry and his team could check the veracity of every word Mace spoke, and Harry was grateful for that recording now. His mind was spinning, reeling at the sheer scope of the treachery he'd unearthed. He wasn't sure he would have been able to recall all the details, later. He wasn't sure he'd want to.

"Bateman wanted to make good, Harry, and he stayed loyal to you, even after he was captured by the Russians. But his loyalty was always to me, first and foremost, because I was the one who could take it all away from him, whenever I chose."

"Why now?" Harry asked when Mace had been quiet for a few moments.

"Nicholas Blake died, and I realized this was the perfect opportunity to make my return. No one remembered or cared about Cotterdam, except for you and Ruth. I called in my favor with John Bateman. He didn't want to do it, Harry, he really didn't, but he knew the alternative was spending the rest of his life in prison, and he told me he would rather die than go back there. I gave him the photographs of you and Elena, and told him how to access Ruth's medical records. You didn't know about that little secret, did you, Harry?"

Harry clasped his hands together tightly on the tabletop in front of him, to keep from striking Mace once again. The casual way he spoke, the air of smug superiority he retained despite the circumstances, was galling.

"It was his plan, planting the bugs where you would find them, luring you out of the house. I was so relieved when he told me that you and Ruth had gone to a hotel. I thought that, just this once, things were going to work out in my favor." A hint of bitterness crept into his voice, as if he couldn't believe that he had been so maligned. The sheer ego that required was sickening.

"What did you hope to find?" Harry asked, knowing the answer, needing to hear it all the same.

"Clive McTaggert's memoirs, of course. Or your infernal diary. I would have settled for either."

Harry nodded. "Thank you, Oliver," he said. And with that, he rose from his chair. Mace cringed away from him, looking suddenly rather smaller than he had done a few moments before.

"Harry-"

Harry did not answer. He turned on his heel, and left the room. He continued on his way out of Thames House, stopping only long enough to deliver a few instructions to Tariq. It was time for him to get back to Ruth. He had heard enough.


	19. Chapter 19

In her dream, Ruth was lying in Harry's arms, warm and content, on the first morning she woke to find herself in his bed. Actually the only morning, so far, though she hoped there would be many more, thousands upon thousands of mornings in which she could roll over, and press her lips against the soft skin of his throat, hear the deep, rumbling growl of his appreciation reverberating through his chest. In her dream, her head rested upon his chest, and beneath her ear she could hear the steady thrumming of his heart, while his broad, strong hand trailed gently up and down the length of her spine, the pair of them delighting in the quiet and the brush of skin on skin. It had taken them years to reach that point, years of heartbreak and despair, of grief and pain and loss, for them to carve out for themselves one single, blissful morning in which to lie, tangled up together, warm and sated beneath his sheets. Ruth did not want to wake from this dream; she wanted to lie there with Harry, warm and safe and loved, for all the rest of her days.

But beneath her ear, the steady thrumming sound of his heart began to change. It was no longer a deep, slow beat; it had morphed into a sort of beeping noise. _It's his bloody mobile,_ she thought blearily, trying her best to hold on to some piece of the happiness the dream had brought her. In her dream, she tilted her head back, and watched Harry's dear sweet face swimming above her. "Time to wake up, my love," he told her softly. Ruth smiled, to hear him refer to her as such. She had begun to slip into consciousness, the dream fading quickly, but the sound of him calling her _my love_ echoed in the vaults of her mind like a Sunday morning church bell.

The beeping noise continued unabated, and suddenly, behind her eyelids there was only darkness, and a pain so deep it left her breathless.

"Harry," she gasped, her eyes flying open. The scene resolved itself around her; she was lying in a hospital bed, and the pace of the beeping now matched the frantic staccato of her own heart thundering in her chest as the events that had led to this moment came crashing down around her. Tears sprung to her eyes unbidden as fear consumed her; what had become of Harry? The last thing she recalled was a sharp, searing pain in her chest, and a sense of falling, of watching Harry's face, pale white and terrified, fading from view. _God, please, let him be all right. Don't take him from me, not now._

From somewhere off to her left, she heard the sound of someone moving about. "Harry?" she cried, turning her head on the pillow. Her chest was too painful, her limbs too heavy to roll over properly, and all she could do was move her head. The sight that greeted her offered no comfort; a strange, portly man was tentatively approaching her bedside. There was no sign of Harry.

"Harry?" she repeated, this time in a voice hardly more than a whisper. She could form no word save for his name, but that word carried with it her every question, her every doubt.

"Harry's fine, not to worry," the stranger assured her. He had a kindly, somewhat posh sort of voice, and though she was relieved, to learn that Harry was safe and well, she was still troubled. Who was this man? Why was he here, and not Harry?

"I'm William Towers," the man introduced himself, adding, "Home Secretary, actually," when he registered the look of incomprehension on Ruth's face.

"Right," Ruth breathed. Her throat was scratchy and raw, her mind was spinning, and all she wanted was Harry. Still, though, she supposed it wasn't every day a woman got shot in the chest and woke to find the Home Secretary keeping vigil by her bedside, and she tried to remember her manners. "I'm sorry," she began, but he cut her off with a flippant wave of his hand.

"I've only had the job for a week," he said. "I'm sorry we had to meet under these circumstances. Harry had to…step out, for a little while, but he should be back soon."

Ruth couldn't help but feel a petulant sort of disappointment at that; she would have liked, very much, to have woken to the sight of Harry's face. Still, though, she understood better than most that Harry did not always get to choose where he went, or when. He served a fickle mistress.

"Perhaps I'd better fetch a nurse," Towers suggested, shuffling somewhat awkwardly on his feet. Ruth just nodded; she was feeling rather tired, again, and she did not want to muddle her way through a polite conversation with a politician just now. She closed her eyes, and tried to remember exactly how she had felt, wrapped up tight in the circle of Harry's arms.

* * *

By the time Harry reached the hospital, he had come to a decision. From the moment he had learned of Nicholas Blake's treachery, the thought of continuing on in his current position had seemed untenable. He found it interesting that it was that betrayal, and not the knowledge that Blake had happily agreed to have Harry and his entire team murdered by an unhinged Irishman two years before, that left him questioning the value of his job. With the knowledge that he and Ruth were finally on the same page, with the hope that they might be able to build a life together, he had started to consider the possibility of a life beyond Thames House. Ruth had given him a precious gift, one he had never expected; she had given him back his life, had restarted his flagging heart and fed the flames of hope that had long since dwindled down to nothing more than smoldering coals in his chest. And now, now that he knew how sweet it could be, to lose himself inside her, now that he knew what it might be like, to wake in the morning and not immediately think of work, only of work, always of work, the thought of returning to his humdrum life was galling.

He had learned the cost of his choices; Oliver Mace and Lucas North had very nearly stolen away the most precious thing in his life, and he could not fathom a future in which he continued to choose duty to country over the yearning of his heart. He wanted, very much, to take Ruth away from all of this. He wanted, very much, to be free. Maybe they could finally embark upon their Grand Tour, the one he had been dreaming about for years now. Maybe he could wake in the morning, and spend the whole blissful day wrapped up in her. Maybe, maybe, maybe…the possibilities seemed endless, and he could not, would not, sacrifice this opportunity. Not this time. The Service had taken enough from him; the time had come for him to take his leave.

When he arrived at the hospital, thus decided, he found Towers sitting in the corner of Ruth's room with a newspaper spread out across his knees.

"Harry!" he boomed when he caught sight of him, shuffling to his feet and crossing the room to shake his hand. "She was awake for a few minutes. She asked after you. I can see how she got you so enthralled, Harry, she's lovely."

For his part, Harry simply grunted. He could not tear his eyes from Ruth's face, so blissful now in repose, could not rise above the waves of guilt that rolled over him at the thought that she had woken to find Towers there in his stead. More than anything, he had wanted to be the first thing she saw, wanted to take her hand in his and promise her that he would never leave her side, ever again, for all the rest of his days.

Even Towers could not miss the sheer devotion with which Harry was gazing at his Ruth; the man cleared his throat, and clapped Harry on the shoulder. "She'll be all right," he said reassuringly.

"Home Secretary, I would like to tender my resignation," Harry said, still not taking his eyes from Ruth's face. Did he see her eyelashes flutter, just then? He wondered. _Come back to me, my Ruth._

"Come now, Harry," Towers protested, but Harry just shook his head.

"I have served my country well and faithfully for thirty years. The time has come. My letter of resignation will be on your desk first thing in the morning."

For a moment Towers looked as if he were going to object, but then he followed Harry's gaze to Ruth's bed, and then he smiled knowingly. "Very well. It was a pleasure to meet you, Sir Harry. I'm sorry we won't be working together." At this he extended his hand, and Harry reached out to shake it once more.

"As am I," he lied. Perhaps he could have grown to like William Towers, given the opportunity, but he had more important things to focus on now. Towers left him, and Harry dragged the chair back across the room. Once he was seated by her bedside, he once more lifted her hand in his.

* * *

Ruth tried very hard not to smile, as she listened to Harry deliver his resignation to Towers. She had been feigning sleep for the better part of an hour, hoping to avoid any further conversation with the loquacious Home Secretary, but she had recognized the sound of Harry's footfalls in the hall beyond her door, and she had listened intently to every word he spoke. And when Towers left, she heard Harry take his seat beside her. When she felt Harry's lips brush the back of her hand she could maintain the ruse no longer, and she turned to him with a smile on her face.

"Harry," she breathed, smiling.

"Hello, my love," he answered, reaching out to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes, his fingertips gentle on her skin.

If Harry had told her just a week before that he was planning to retire, she would have been horrified at the very prospect. It would have been untenable, the thought of her continuing on without Harry, for if he had left the Service, they would have been denied contact, unable to speak to one another, and her world would have been rendered bleak and miserable without him. Now though, she had something she had not had a week before. She had hope, the hope he had given her, the dream that they might carry on, together, that they might be something more than the swirling shadows they had become. To know that he felt much the same, that this dream had inspired him to make a change in his own life, left her heart singing.

"Did you mean it, Harry? Are you really leaving the Service?" she asked him, tightening her grip on his hand.

He nodded, slowly. "I know we should have talked about it before I said anything, but-"

"Harry, I love you," she blurted, unable to keep the words from spilling out. It was the first time either of them had spoken the sentiment aloud, the first time either of them had been brave enough to give voice to the _something wonderful that was never said,_ and the moment the words passed her lips, Harry's face broke into the most brilliant smile she had ever seen. He gripped her hand almost painfully tight, and leaned over to press a tender kiss against her lips, mindful to keep his weight off of her all the while, for which she was grateful.

"I love you," he murmured, his lips brushing hers, and she felt the prickle of tears behind her eyelids as emotions too numerous to count threatened to drown her completely. "I love you, and I will never, ever leave you," he continued, and then she did begin to cry in earnest.

She cursed her wounds, for in that moment she wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him, to fall into his embrace, to be sheltered in the warmth and quiet of his arms. He ran his hands gently over her hair, smiling down at her, brushing the tears from her cheeks with the pad of his thumb.

Later she would ask him what had happened. Who had done this to them, why, if they had been captured. Later she would ask him what he planned for them, where they would go, what would become of the Section without them, for if he was leaving then she surely was as well. _Where you go, I will follow,_ she thought as he resumed his seat beside her, her hand nestled securely in his own. The troubles of this life could wait, she decided, for now she simply needed to touch him, needed to hear him breathing beside her, needed the reassurance of his steady presence. Through devastation and betrayal, through death and through pain and through loss beyond counting, they had endured, and somehow, they had made it to this place, together. She would be his wife, and he would be her husband, and maybe, just maybe, they would be happy.

* * *

 **Thank you, as always, for your many kind words of support, and for taking this journey with me. Though some of you may very well be tired of me, I've got another story on the way, and it will likely make an appearance before the week is out.**


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